Karl Berger, Max Johnson, Billy Mintz: Sketches

An exquisitely palatable sense of dance permeates the gregarious music bassist Max Johnson brings to the fore on Sketches, the second of two heady 2022 releases. Whereas the first, Orbit of Sound (Unbroken Sounds), teams him up with the rule-elusive sax and flute of Anna Weber and drummer Michael Sarin, Sketches presents a slightly more straight ahead approach with pianist and vibraphonist Karl Berger and drummer Billy Mintz.

But straight ahead is not quite fair, or descriptive enough of the effusive elasticity at the heart of Sketches' seven full bore performances. Each player testifies expressively and freely and if it is not exactly Moses chanting from Mount Sinai, well, what precisely is these days, as we stumble from one tactless mile marker to the next?

These three musicians are communicating and creating on a high plain and where else but in the making of music that moves and soothes does that happen? It happens on the sweeping merriment of "Black Eyed Suzie," a 1924 bluegrass standard that has had its day with Pete Seeger, Oscar Brand, Doc Watson and a host of others but never quite this way. Berger's vibraphone sets the island breezes blowing and a festival of skirts lift, kick and whirl as Mintz and Johnson shimmy and drive the groove along. Berger's "Presently," an acerbic yet witty exercise, progresses through a host of moods and pulses.

It seems heartless to say that a pandemic which ravaged the world in so many ways opened so many artistic doors and pathways for musicians, poets, painters—artists of any discipline—but it is equally hard to deny when witnessing them at their chosen craft. So the trio sheds a new late-night blue light on "Ginger Blue" one of Charlie Haden's bluer moments from his days with the Ginger Baker Trio alongside Bill Frisell. Mintz's free flowing "Flight" finds Berger again on the vibraphone for solos and interplay. "Sketches," both as elliptical ballad and album whole, lends credence to the fact that it never hurts to go back and listen to what you might have missed.

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