Myra Melford Be Bread: The Image Of Your Body

The programme starts promisingly enough with "Equal Grace, where the sustenance of a mood shows how well the group with Vu can deal with the matter of dynamics; even in the up-tempo section of the piece, there is a reflective quality, and it offers a tantalising glimpse of what might happen if Vu and the Melford trio work together in the future.

On "Luck Shifts, Melford and guitarist Brandon Ross echo the kind of relationship that Paul Bley and Bill Frisell have had in the past, but the introspection here could be too much for a lot of tastes. The two musicians don't seem to match the heights of those two masters' intuitive grasp of each other's work, and before too long a certain anonymity sets in.

It's clear on the likes of "Yellow Are Crowds Of Flowers, II that the Melford trio has reached some rarefied stage of musical understanding; Melford proves that she can work that Cecil Taylor space with the best of them, and this point might just bring to light precisely what keeps this disc from being something exceptional. Both the trio and the guests seem too often to edge towards an unstimulating form of politeness; opting for a more expansive approach would perhaps have made for more engaging music. The results as they stand, however, are not only a mixed affair but also a frustrating listen.

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