ECM

Following the trail of poetic adventurism he blazed with his excellent 2011 solo turn Avenging Angel, pianist Craig Taborn continues to change the game at ECM with the debut full-length from his new trio, Chants.

The relationship between Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver is a well-established one that goes back a good quarter century while enrolled as students at the University of Michigan on through to their longtime tandem tenure in sax great James Carter’s 90s lineup and most recently as part of the Brooklyn avant-garde outfit Farmers By Nature alongside bassist William Parker. Joining them on Chants, however, is upright scion Thomas Morgan, whose artistry has been lent to such acclaimed fellow ECM titles as John Abercrombie’s Wait Till You See Her from 2009 and the forthcoming City of Broken Dreams as part of Italian piano man Giovanni Guidi’s trio. Here, the rhythm section brings the same kind of sustained eloquence they bring as members of Polish trumpet icon Tomasz Stanko’s New York quartet to these nine compositions without compromising the pace of Taborn’s improvisational daring, ass if the three were completing a long-in-the-works bridge between Cecil Taylor and Bill Evans on the likes of “Hot Blood” and “Silver Ghosts”.

With Chants, Craig Taborn continues to ascend into the stratosphere as a crown jewel of one of jazz music’s most celebrated imprints.