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Paul Bley/Gary Peacock/Paul Motian, Not Two, Not One (62:37);
ECM 1670, 1999
ECM Records
Postfach 600 331
81203 München, Germany
Cyberhome: www.ecmrecords.com
Despite its esoteric thrust, this music is suffused with the classic
sound of the jazz piano trio. And if anyone knows the format inside
and out, it's these three men. Pianist Paul Bley started out as a
bebopper in the 50s, playing trio with Mingus and Art Blakey. A
decade later, drummer Paul Motian played a key role in Bill Evans's
reinvention of the trio concept. Later still, bassist Gary Peacock
furthered the idiom's evolution in a long-standing association with
Keith Jarrett. So of course a Bley/Peacock/Motian trio is going to be
serious stuff.
A free jazz aesthetic prevails on the album. Tempos,
harmonies, and forms are for the most part implied and difficult to
detect. Yet the music is never cacophonous. Quite the contrary, it
possesses a kind of beauty that can only be called traditional. The
listener, however, must do without the guideposts of conventional
composition and arranging. The sounds you will hear are at once
familiar and profoundly mysterious.
Of the tunes, Bley wrote "Fig Foot," "Now," and "Vocal
Tracked." The latter two are deliciously contrasting solo piano
features, while "Fig Foot" is a blues-inflected work for the full
trio. Peacock authored the restless "Intente," the even more restless
"Set Up Set," and a jewel of a solo bass piece titled "Entelechy."
Bley and Peacock cowrote "Noosphere," "Dialogue Amour," and "Don't
You Know," the three most "normal" tracks on the record. ("Dialogue
Amour" is the only cut that features a walking bass line, and even
then only for a moment.) All three players composed "Not Zero: In
Three Parts," the opener, and "Not Zero: In One Part," the closer. On
every track, the boundary between the planned and the spontaneous is
quite blurry, prompting curiosity as to how these tunes might look on
paper, if they are in fact written down at all. Yet amid all the
freedom and abstraction, there's an order and cohesion that holds
this music together, a glue that is entirely specific to this trio.
Bley, Peacock, and Motian are three huge names in jazz, but
this is no ordinary jazz supergroup thrown together to sell tickets
and records. I had the pleasure of seeing them perform at the
Knitting Factory in 1998. I was impressed then, and I'm even more
impressed now.
~David R. Adler
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