Rachel Eckroth: Humanoid

Pianist Rachel Eckroth may use wellness or New agey terms such as polymath or bold vision to describe her approach to her considerable art, but she gets down to Earth for real and very quickly on Humanoid, her first all-acoustic recording.

Recorded live at Sam's First in Los Angeles, Eckroth's very active imagination spearheads a group, including bassist and all round jazz entrepreneur Billy Mohler, drummer Tina Raymond—whose uncanny sense for everything a drummer can do, can be done at any moment and still drive the beat—and guitarist Andrew Renfroe, for a first set which would make audience members buy a ticket for the second.

Free of her electronics, Eckroth commands the keyboard as few before her have. How else can one explain the cut and paste, jumping tension jumble of Humanoid's flagship track? Eight minutes of pure unabashed sass and interpretation, Eckroth and Renfroe (whose integration of sound spans the whole jazz vocabulary) compliment and complain, state their case and take it from there. That Mohler and Raymond can keep ahead of things is one of the key reasons Humanoid is so cool and easy to listen to. Over and over.

"Mind," the big sky, open-ended second of Eckroth's vivid four compositions, highlights Renfroe in full Pat Metheny mode, coasting on the combined updrafts of Eckroth, Raymond, and Mohler. Carla Bley's unhurried "Lawns" (from Sextet. (ECM, 1987) is taken at just the right speed. And that each arrives at the same rapturous conclusion makes for another cool reason to pay heed.

A moody indulgence pulls listeners into Eckroth's "Under a Fig Tree" only to snap to attention and head out on its own to the outer realms where each player can not wait to kick the tune in another direction altogether. Collaborative mayhem, perhaps, until the pianist pulls it back with Raymond as her wingman and Mohler in pursuit. Duke Ellington's stately cascade of E flat minor sequences, "Fleurette Africaine"—first heard with Charles Mingus and Max Roach on the revered Money Jungle (United Artists, 1962)—unwinds with all the honor and humor that the composition richly deserves.

Mohler's "Evolution" breaks loose from the start and re-assembles itself beautifully after a flurry of activity from Eckroth and Raymond, a duo very familiar with each other's flair. Raymond's solo at the six-minute mark crackles and sparks. Eckroth's re-entrance into the fury just is not something heard or accomplished everyday, and that goes threefold for Humanoid as a whole.

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