Kristina Barta: Endless Questions and Answers

Czech pianist/composer Kristina Barta's Endless Questions and Answers opens on a rather ominous tone. Drummer Marek Urbanek plays on his toms a shadowy, esoteric rhythm. Tenor Jure Pukl flares in. Barta enters slowly, barely audible with bassist Peter Korman riding shotgun. But soon she controls the barely controllable rush that embodies "Breaking Through Some Border," the breakthrough opener to a fine, fine recording.

Barta—a graduate from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and a finalist in the 2016 Euroradio Jazz Competition in the Netherlands—keeps the action chugging along. "The One Who Believes" is a full bore slice of Euro post-bop: airy, articulate, unfussy. Clean and propulsive. The trio of Urbánek, Korman, and Pukl hold the landscape to task allowing Barta to muse about the sweeping terrain's many highway and byways.

The almost-too-ballady ballad "No Time Ritual" echoes just enough of the other eighheen-million ballads out there to kind of halt the forward spread of motion the previous two tracks had given themselves to. The slow, unfolding, knotty structure of "Everything's Changed" breaks that spell. It is soon followed by "Without Anxiety" where Barta balances her melodic balladry and her instinct for jumpy improv with keen nuance.

The quartet revels in that jumpy bop energy on "Fictional Trips." Barta is all over the Cecil Taylor/Marilyn Crispell playbook and it is a pure rush to listen to. Pukl, his tone classic sax—sharp but not strident, resonant with metro narrative—pulls with and against Barta, busting space for Urbánek's muscle and Korman's insistence to rule the day. Despite the couple of originals that sound a tad over-studied, Endless Questions and Answers does not disappoint and delivers if not many answers, certainly many promises.