Dave Bass: Trio Nuevo, Vol 3

The most enjoyable part of a listenable piano trio is the sense that no one is trying to prove anything. The music unfolds because the three musicians trust each other enough to leave room for surprise. A pianist has to know when to take charge and when to get out of the way, when a bass line needs encouragement and when the drums need space. On Trio Nuevo, Vol 3, pianist Dave Bass, bassist Tyler Miles and drummer Steve Helfand share that understanding. They project that they genuinely listen to each other.

The eleven tracks take a wonderful journey from Bach to Tchaikovsky to Brazil, Chick Corea, Thelonious Monk and Walt Disney, yet the music never feels like a collection of stylistic exercises. Pianist Bass has a clear sense of personality, and the trio consistently sounds as if it is discovering the music together.

"Neither Have I Wings" opens the album, drawing on the Brazilian baião, which gives the music its rhythmic pulse through the bass line and Miles's stellar solo. Hefland's stick work is exactly where it should be, alert yet unobtrusive. "Toccata" begins slowly with an original Bass passage and an arco interlude from Miles, then moves into a three-part fugue from Bach's "E Minor Toccata." The trio moves in and out of Bach's written lines, with Bass' single-note playing impressive.

A contrafact is a musical composition that sets a new melody over the chord progression of a pre-existing song. Bass has integrated that construct into his repertoire, beginning with "Fingerprints/Gantry," which cleverly pairs Chick Corea's "Fingerprints," itself a contrafact of Wayne Shorter's "Footprints," which becomes a 12-bar blues in 6/4, with Bass' gospel-based "Gantry," a 16-bar blues in 4/4. The change in feel is striking.

"When You Wish Upon A Star" was written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington for the 1940 Walt Disney animated film Pinocchio. Bass reharmonizes it, so you hear a song you thought you knew in a new light, yet it remains firmly within a modern jazz vocabulary. "Work" is one of   Monk's lesser-known works, but with its altered introduction, it belongs here. Its angular, unconventional character gives Helfand room to stretch out with wonderfully assured, inventive drumming.

The other two contrafacts on this release are "Lost Mambo," based on Juan Tizol's "Perdido," and the closer "You Lose," based on the Ralph Rainger- Leo Robin romantic ballad "If I Should Lose You." The former gets off to an appealing start with Bass and Miles moving in unison. From there, the trio, backed by Helfand's rhythmic timekeeping, keeps its infectious Cuban tumbao intact while shifting to a more focused, spare exchange. On the latter number, Bass and the trio have stripped all the romance from it, leaving something more forceful, almost defiant.

Ultimately, the album is about listening. Three musicians listening to each other, to the stories behind the music, and to the possibilities still within it.