Nicholas Payton: Triune

The multi-hyphenate Nicholas Payton premieres a new trio, recording alongside eccentric bassist Esperanza Spalding and straight-ahead luminary Karriem Riggins, a roster enough to whet any forward-thinking listener's appetites. Payton, beyond his wildly successful sideman stints with Oscar Peterson, Mulgrew Miller and Milt Jackson, has also made great strides to define his own worldly, idiosyncratic style as leader and solo artist, drawing from both his bopping lineage and the moodier, atmospheric ambitions of his peers. He parades confidently through no-nonsense bop and funk alike, contemporary fusion and hip-hop—nothing fazes him. Payton is insatiable, varied, defined only by a cohesive formalism, a workmanlike approach to performance common to all the great session musicians but increasingly rare in the modern era.

In a sense, Spalding and Riggins represent two complementary strands of Payton's music. Spalding, ever the inventor, soars in this recording with eerie, ritualistic hums, a plaintive and iridescent bow that lingers to ambience in certain strands. Riggins is unimposing and sturdy. His drums never shed that undefinable yet essential element of necessity in a composition, the unerring embodiment of the rhythm. Between the two lies Payton, a furtive mix of new and old, conventional and radical, each equally without compromise.

The dichotomy makes for delicious, contentious music, especially in looser sections of "Ultraviolet" and "Jazz Is a Four-Letter Word," where Riggins' masterful navigation becomes tantamount to the health of the ship. Spalding, too, is profound and pensive, challenging the smooth licks of the vocalists' in "#bamisforthechildren" with her own acerbic swooning.

However, there is a sense that Payton is too slight a force in crucial phrases. On piano and organ, he does not relent for a second, propagating a bombast the more intellectual performers sorely require, but when manning the horn, he is oddly careful, sticks close to the lines and looses his sound in a torrent of conflicting rhythm sections. Unevenness aside, the record holds plenty of exciting ideas and late-summer warmth. Payton's organ in the mambo-esque "Gold Dust Black Magic" is strange and potent, and Spalding certainly earns her position as one of the finest bassists working today, and certainly the most mysterious. If the recording does not always congeal to a whole, those instances where it allows itself a sporadic, individual character, flirts with genuine insight.