Izumi Kimura / Barry Guy / Gerry Hemingway: Six Hands Open As One

Although dating back to at least Aesop's fables written in 500 BC, the saying that you can know someone by the company they keep remains as true as ever. While Irish-based Japanese pianist Izumi Kimura is the nominal leader, the egalitarian trio on Six Hands Open As One finds her in illustrious company.

Bassist Barry Guy and drummer Gerry Hemingway have both led storied careers which defy concise summation, but Guy's affinity for the format is worth discussing. Part of the groundbreaking Howard Riley Trio in the early 1970s, he has also enjoyed long associations with pianists as varied as Marilyn Crispell and Agusti Fernandez, alongside many more shorter-lived outfits. Kimura, like the bassist, also works in contemporary classical circles, but she has increasingly moved into improvisatory spaces, with this unit the prime beneficiary. Happily, she proves as comfortable straddling the swings between written and unfettered as her veteran colleagues.

Together the threesome trades in oblique melody and restrained drama over the course of four originals, with two from the pianist and one from each of the others. Hemingway's "The Unexpected" gives the first taste of the super sensitive, highly attuned interplay, building through four parts from haunted indeterminate sounds, via a dignified processional and explosive piano/drum duet to a concluding passage of uncertain ambiance and halting gestures.

Hemingway explains in the liners that the piece offers four imaginations of the wartime experience in Ukraine. While that backstory colors how the realization is received, the piece also contains opportunities for individual expression, such as Guy's characteristically virtuosic toggling between taut arco and plucked, slurred resonance, as well as the aforementioned duet, that takes it beyond the solely programmatic.

Kimura's cuts are more enigmatic still. There is a sense of stepping into the unknown on "Cloud Echoes," as it gradually accumulates detail, before vividly unfurling piano chords, with exquisite obligato from Guy in the cracks between and a slightly wistful, understated crescendo. "Underdrift" also subverts expectations. Hemingway's clanking percussion beneath Kimura's bright hopeful piano helps create a slightly uncomfortable ambiguous feel to the piece. Meanwhile, Guy's "Gnomon" proceeds in a series of contrasts, like his playing writ large, moving between somber lyricism and nervy staccato prance, incorporating an outburst of flailing drums, pummeled piano and energetic bowed swipes along the way.

Nonetheless, the ultimate impression is of an album that does not need to shout. It states its case quietly and emphatically. But above all engagingly.

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