Works—The Brooklyn Trio Finding Freedom in Space

"I want to play music with these guys right now!" pianist Daniel Kelly exclaims midway through discussing Scouring for the Elements (Connection Works Records, 2024), the album from Brooklyn trio Works. Works is Kelly, flutist Michel Gentile, and drummer Rob Garcia and Scouring for the Elements is only their second recording in seventeen years.

In that time, they have been plenty busy, Works is a vibrant working outfit, with over 250 concerts through their nonprofit Connection Works, collaborations with artists from Joe Lovano to the Mivos Quartet, and constant musical exploration through their unconventional lineup. The band has anchored Brooklyn's jazz community since 2007, when Garcia founded Connection Works. "I was at a place where I wanted to create something bigger than just having a band," Garcia says. "Something that served this tradition of music, this lineage known as jazz." Reading Marty Khan's book Straight Ahead (Outward Visions Books, 2004) about jazz nonprofits sparked the idea. "Every symphony orchestra and chamber orchestra is a nonprofit organization. The community needed more venues, more opportunities for musicians to perform." The nonprofit model represented a way to achieve those things. Their concert series Brooklyn Jazz Wide Open regularly makes New York Times critics' picks, featuring NEA Jazz Masters Dave Liebman and Sheila Jordan alongside educational workshops, chamber music collaborations, and commissioned big band pieces.

Each member of Works brings substantial musical credentials to the group. Gentile studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and has played with Ray Charles, Joe Lovano, and Fred Hersch. Garcia has played on over 70 albums, including several Grammy winners, working with artists from Wynton Marsalis to David Byrne to Diana Krall. Kelly has performed with Grammy winners Michael Brecker and Joe Lovano while creating music projects that mix journalism, literature, and visual art. Their joint trio format is the home they keep returning to.

"In a trio setting, you can move in any direction or all directions at once," Gentile says. "Everybody in the group is aware of those directions. Sometimes we don't know where things will land with the three of us, and we just go for it."

Their instrumentation of flute, piano and drums without bass creates distinctive textures and opportunities. "Because there's no bassist, there are many more possibilities of grooves, textures, and different ways to go," Garcia says. "Not having a bassist allows the group to avoid falling into typical rhythmic patterns that a jazz group might default to. Daniel has amazing ideas, and we play off each other. Sometimes we want to get into a groove, and we both feel it and then just go with it."

Kelly embraces the musical space: "As a pianist, it's challenging because I want to create an interesting approach. I don't want to just play the bass with my left hand. I want to create something unique."

The album's twelve tracks include deeply personal compositions from each musician. The title track comes from sculptor Jimmy Greenfield's earth-carved piece showing three life-sized men searching. Gentile wrote it as a three-part canon. His "Diary of a Missing Voice" stems from his three-year-old daughter's experience with selective mutism. "She insisted on playing bass notes to a piece I thought I was composing alone," he says. "In the end, she dictated the direction the music took." Another Gentile piece, "When Elephants Mourn Their Dead," considers how these creatures show reverence for their deceased, suggesting lessons about the sanctity of life. Kelly's "Forgotten Memories" uses four independent melody lines, while his "Forest Walk" captures "the relaxing quality" of moving through trees. "Experiment in 5" shifts from lyrical melodies over repeating piano patterns to aggressive full-band rhythmic unisons.

The band waited eleven years between albums partly due to their focus on live performance and grant writing. "Something that happens when you're a nonprofit like Connection Works is that you spend a lot of time writing grants to make the concert series work and to fund special projects," Gentile says. "It seems like every year, we write grants to fund recordings. Then you wait to see what happens with that. If it doesn't come through, we [always] consider doing the project ourselves, but there's another grant coming up, so you try that one."

Four group improvisations close the new album: "Sound Sanctuary" working with overtone patterns, "Gravitas" building from the piano's lowest strings, "Prepared Uncertainty" finding freedom within limits, and "Inverted Cloud" playing with musical perspective. "When you trust the people you're with and trust yourself to know what to do, you don't need to micromanage yourself about what you're going to play," Garcia says. "It's always better that way where you can just be in the moment. I'm listening, and it's just coming out of me. And then I'm just listening to the whole group, or I am the whole group. When that happens, it's like exercising a muscle of getting into that space, into that flow zone."

Kelly puts it simply: "Your life is an improvisation. You're figuring out as you go. You can have plans of what's going to happen, but there are unexpected things that come forward. You change your mind as you learn and grow. And so yeah, improvisation is life, and to do it with these dear friends is a real gift."