Tigran Hamasyan: Stand Art

Many jazz pianists start out by playing tunes from the standard pop and jazz repertoires before tackling their own compositions. Tigran Hamasyan has gone in the opposite direction. He has been recording original works and traditional Armenian songs since 2005. Now, on his eleventh album, he finally gets around to playing American standards.

Hamasyan leads a trio here with Matt Brewer on bass and Justin Brown on drums, occasionally helped out by tenor saxophonists Mark Turner and Joshua Redman and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. The versions of standards on this album do not sound like conventional piano jazz. Irregular rhythms constantly underpin the tracks and the leader's piano floats in a few traces of Armenian folk music from time to time. On "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" Hamasyan hammers the melody relentlessly as Brown establishes a laid-back hip-hop groove. The trio plays "Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise" in constantly shifting tempos as the melody is passed between piano and bass. The stop-start dynamics of this version sound like an elaborate Return to Forever arrangement. Their treatments of "Laura" and Elmo Hope's "De-Dah" are similar, filled with dazzling swoops and darts as Hamasyan's piano twirls and pounces over the steadily simmering rhythm that Brewer and Brown lay down.

The guest stars only appear on about half of the album. "All The Things You Are" is played as a duet by Hamasyan and Turner with both musicians drifting easily over the theme, Turner languidly blowing the melody as the piano tinkles around him. Joshua Redman plays with the trio on Charlie Parker's "Big Foot," playing twisting Parker-like bebop lines in the midst of a sudden tempo shift which goes from chopped up funk to fast walking 4/4 jazz. Akinmusire appears twice; his duet with Hamasyan on "I Should Care" is the most subdued and straightforward music on the set. He blows a quietly straight version of the melody as the pianist quietly decorates the atmosphere around him. He joins the full trio on the only Hamasyan original of the set, "Invasion During An Operetta," squealing and squawking into a loose jumble of dancing piano and hazy rhythm play. The piece has an uncertain, hesitant feel and sounds as if it could be a space exploration theme from some old science fiction movie.

Hamasyan can be a heavy and overly busy pianist but the context of this session never lets him stay in a manic state for very long. The frequent tempo shifts and the measured beats of the rhythm section prevent that. The contrast between the piano and the bass and drums gives the music an attractive tension and the guest horn players add more melodic grounding when they appear. This album shows how Tigran Hamasyan can bring fresh interpretations to familiar material.