Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders: Ecliptic

Scrubbed piano strings, malleted drums and a tenor saxophone testing the air may not conjure the usual Sunday-afternoon reverie, yet that is how the trio Shifa ignited its early-2023 matinee at north London's Café Oto. Ecliptic, the group's third document following Live at Café Oto (577 Records, 2019) and Live in Oslo (577 Records, 2020), captures pianist Pat Thomas, saxophonist Rachel Musson, and drummer Mark Sanders in the sort of unpremeditated council that has made them pillars of the UK improvising community. Consequently their ease in navigating spontaneous form over long spans is less a revelation than a reaffirmation of what sustained collaboration can yield.

Crashing saxophone and piano outbursts punctuate the timbral interchange. Discontinuity never curdles into chaos, someone always stands poised to steer the current. Sanders fulfils that role early on: his cymbal and tone colors pick up the slack and redirect the energy. And there is a lot of energy to go round, meted out in judicious portions. Volume and density pivot abruptly, but the threesome maintains a shared contour, a sense that its narrative—however volatile— remains sufficiently legible to keep an audience on the edge of its seats throughout the unbroken set.

Thomas alternates between keys and strings, marrying rhythmic impulse with percussive repetitions, as stabbed chords anchor a wayward right hand. Musson's rough-hewn sound and command of adventurous technique complements him at every turn. But she tempers her passion with lyrical flashes, the screams never far from an undercutting sigh. Sanders binds all these elements with an idiosyncratic mix of novel texture and propulsion, his phrasing hovering just outside predictable meter yet never adrift.

They unite in fast-changing consort. Even as intensity mounts through Thomas' reiterated pounding, clattering drums and the saxophone's repeated ascent from a gruff bottom end, resolution runs elusive. Instead they veer unexpectedly. Sanders lays out, leaving Thomas and Musson to tumble on until they too quieten, at which point the drummer initiates a brief solo, before another configuration emerges. Conventional markers—ballad feel, melody, swing—surface only in fragments, like structures fleetingly illuminated by lightning in a storm. Instead, what Ecliptic ultimately preserves is the trio's acuity: three seasoned improvisers shaping a 45-minute span with reflexive listening and finely tuned instinct.

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