Three Visitors At Joe Henderson Lab

Three Visitors 
Joe Henderson Lab
San Francisco, CA
November 22, 2025 

The first notes of Edward Simon 's "What If" emerged out of the dark at the Joe Henderson Lab, cutting through the reflections of car lights sliding across the room's glass walls. Inside the 100-seat club, the city was a flickering backdrop rather than a distraction; the real weather was being made onstage by Three Visitors, the long-standing trio of Simon, bassist Scott Colley, and drummer Brian Blade. Their one-hour first set felt less like a tour stop and more like a small gathering in a sanctuary, a chance to listen in on three old friends resuming a conversation that never really paused.

On record, the trio's self-titled album, Three Visitors (GroundUP Music, 2024), is an expansive studio project, with strings, special guests, and overdubs widening the palette. Live at JHL, the trappings fell away and the concept behind the band's name came into sharp relief. Simon has described the trio as "visiting each other's stream of consciousness," and Colley has spoken of knowing, within a few notes, that their bond is "somehow in my DNA." Blade has his own metaphor: "I think of iron sharpening iron," he has said of this trio's process. In the lab's close quarters, those ideas were not abstractions; they were the organizing principle of the night, as the trio distilled a 30-year history into a single, focused visitation.

The sound of Three Visitors in this room was acoustic, unhurried, and intensely conversational. Simon's piano lines favored long, singing phrases over technical display, often setting out a harmonic landscape and then stepping back to listen. Colley's bass tone carried a grainy warmth, every note clearly etched, whether he was sketching foundations or stepping forward for a solo. Blade treated the drum kit like a small orchestra, moving from whisper-soft hi-hat taps to sudden swells on the cymbals without ever swamping the room. The audience was so quiet that you could hear those soft taps from the back, and on more than one tune, listeners waited for the final note to completely evaporate before applauding.

Rather than march through the new record chronologically, the trio built the set as a dialogue between past and present. "What If," from their earlier Steel House (Artist Share, 2017) project, set the tone: a lively mix of jazz and Latin rhythm, it posed its title question not with words but with motion, opening doorways into alternate possibilities. Colley's "Kingpin" followed in a darker, more cinematic vein, its blend of soul, blues, and intrigue tightening the focus without sacrificing openness. The mood shifted again with Simon's "Country," introduced by a story about his residency at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. He recalled daily walks through a 400-acre forest to a studio bearing the names of past occupants, including Aaron Copland, and how those walks became a "transitional period into my sanctuary" that sparked the tune. Onstage, the piece carried that sense of solitude and threshold: music as the space between everyday life and the work of inspiration and attention.

Midway through the set, Simon turned to his bandmates to decide what to play next. After a brief, audible huddle, he let the audience in on the process: "That's the problem with a collaborative, it's a true democracy," he joked, before announcing "Ellipsis," from Three Visitors and penned by Colley. The tune's darkly harmonic mood and elusive, Bill Evans—like swing created a feeling of suspended time, as if the trio were circling an unanswered question. Colley's solo on this piece stood out: measured, melodic, and exploratory, it traced a line between serenity and tension, while Blade's commentary on cymbals and toms nudged each phrase into new light. The performance made vivid what the bassist has said about his writing: "Many of the compositions I write are questions that we can play with. And as a trio, we try to determine the answer."

The emotional center of the night arrived with Blade's ballad "Kintsukuroi." Colley explained that the song was "based on this Japanese pottery technique: you take a broken pot and restore it, using gold and silver, so from the fragments, you make something even more beautiful." Blade's drumming became a kind of suspended halo, a cloudlike, floaty rhythmic approach that let Simon's simple, heartrending melody and Colley's supportive lines move through the space like slow breath. It was less a display piece than a meditation on renewal—on how, in improvisation as in life, fractures can become sites of unexpected beauty.

For the closer, Simon's "Lover's Park," the trio returned to Steel House territory. Colley, having just told the crowd, "In case you haven't noticed, Edward has a sensitive side, and this is an amazing composition. Sometimes it's not that sensitive, but it's called 'Lover's Park,'" setting up the final tune with a grin and a note of appreciation. The composition's warm, serene melody and lyrical bass and piano solos offered one more example of the group's "creative democracy." Each musician listened intently, shaping the music in real time rather than chasing virtuoso peaks. When the last chord dissolved, the crowd stood and cheered as the trio bowed together and waved.

What emerged over the hour was not a showcase for individual résumés—even though these are musicians who have worked with everyone from Bobby Hutcherson and Terence Blanchard to Wayne Shorter and Seal—but a portrait of "soul-deep kinship." The contrast between new material from Three Visitors and older pieces from Steel House felt seamless, as if the albums were two chapters of the same ongoing conversation. The Joe Henderson Lab set did not attempt to reproduce the studio record's strings or guests; instead, it distilled the trio down to its essence: three visitors, leaning in toward one another, listening as hard as they created. For anyone in the room—casual listeners and committed jazz fans alike—it was less a genre exercise than a masterclass in attention, and a reminder of how sparks can happen when iron truly sharpens iron.

Setlist: "What If," "Kingpin," "Country," "Ellipsis," "Kintsukuroi," "Lover's Park."

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