Yaniv Taubenhouse: Moments In Trio Volume Three: Roads

Remember the excitement you first felt drawing circles as a kid? That profoundly innocent sense of being able to construct anything inside, outside, on, or upon those circles? Faces, trees, noses. Birds. bees, roses. A wide, westward, indigo sky. A fathomless blue ocean of liquid imagination. That's what it's like when you fully and gratefully engage with NYC based pianist/composer Yaniv Taubenhouse's third go round Moments In Trio Volume Three: Roads.

With his fiercely limber rhythm mates, bassist Rick Rosato and drummer Jerad Lippi, the pianist's elegant musings evolve like a lived-in winter's day. A squall here, a flurry there. But they never leave you cold like some artisans. Taubenhouse's (and the trio's) peculiar circle drawings come at an impressionist's pace, with an infectious, homegrown classicism that gives his seven originals, such as "Morning Night," "Rush Hour Traffic," Blue Forest" instant notability. Taffy-pull takes on "Boo Boo's Birthday," Thelonious Monk's song to his young daughter Barbara, Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," and Charlie Parker's cliffhanging "Star Eyes" make especially moving targets.

Moments In Trio Volume Three: Roads eases generously (check out "Prayer") with melodic hijinks abounding and any number of rhythmic ski trails to keep you on your toes."Blue Forest" lulls you into its hypnotic Zen-ness only to have "Rush Hour Traffic" broadside you.Where many and most have tried to define Manhattan in song, verse, and rhyme here is one of the few that does the great burg justice. A springboard of a tune that Rosato and Lippi easily delineate and detail as Taubenhouse crests and configures. "Flow," a progression of loosely tied harmonics and the roaming themes of "Roads" prove the trio to be master weavers all. Don't miss it.