While conceived as a series of tonal paintings, somehow David Chesky's cornucopia of oblique ruminations on TRIO IN THE NEW HARMONIC suggest to this scribe something more declamatory, and poetically austere, like some non-denominational evening service at a distant Northern latitude and longitude, bathed in a wintery glow, with the faint promise of spring colors peeking through the firmament-illuminating a largely black and white canvas with pastel intimations of some elusive wakening.
As such, the sonic pedigree of Chesky's conceptions, informed as they are on one hand by a tonality redolent of the Second Viennese School of Arnold Schonberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and a collective improvisational sensibility which evokes the prayerful impressionistic ruminations of Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock and Paul Bley, suggests elements of both 20th Century Classicism and of Modern Jazz in its most chamber like iterations.
But the more I immerse myself in the pointillistic hues of Chesky's pianistic abstractions-mated as they are to the elegant earthen countenance of Peter Washington's bass and Billy Drummond's veiled invocations of skin and bronze-the less the music puts me in mind of European classicism or of a piano trio in the Modern Jazz sense, and the more it suggests subliminal streams of Americana in the iconoclastic tradition of a composer such as Charles Ives-plugged in as he was to undercurrents of a rustic past, which spoke to something half-remembered in our mythological unconscious, yet betokening a future barely imaginable when this renegade composer first fashioned his own iteration of the new harmonic, straddling as it did the 19th and 20th century, while shrugging off many of those well-travelled European conventions with intimations of some bold new beyond.
Chesky's own new harmonic evokes a sense of time and place less quaintly rural and small town than that of the Tribal Elder Ives-more rooted as it is in a decidedly urban sense of…becoming.
Chesky's is a chamber music chrysalis seeking to be reborn as a post-modern jazz trio in the left wing traditions of those American pianists, who while they were surely informed by the harmonic cycles of Tin Pan Alley song forms, and a blues/ragtime/swing based tradition of the piano in its virtuoso approximation of post-bop orchestral power, were not beholden to it; seeking instead to depict a more abstract canvas, a painterly sense of the piano's potential for said chamber music sensibility in which, while there is considerable heat applied to the collective improvisational pot, things are consciously never quite fired up to a full boil.
Reflecting as it does the pianist's fascination with cubist chordal juxtapositions-in lieu of more traditional diatonic steeplechases-repeated immersions into the highways and byways of Chesky's new harmonic reward the listener with fresh epiphanies, unwilling as David is to reveal all of his secrets in a single sitting.
Which is why it is surely a mitzvah for Chesky to be able to engage such attentive, self-effacing listeners as Peter Washington and Billy Drummond in celebration of what I might blithely characterize as the esteemed art of comprovisation (okay, okay, so I made the word up by conflating composition and improvisation…sue me). But as one who has lived with this trio for some time, and who has heard Washington and Drummond on numerous occasions-both together and separately, improvising for all they are worth in pedal to the metal bebop throw-downs-their innate ability to step up and counter-punch or to quietly recede into a more passive, supple posture, is perfectly suited to Chesky's oblique musings, as he vectors purposefully between the reactive and the reflective.
And as such-again, in the spirit of collective comprovisation-one is hard pressed to divine what aspects of their trio colloquies are composed, classically speaking, or spontaneously conceived in the best sense of what it means to be an improvising jazz musician.
Be that as it may, it is not incumbent upon the listener to deconstruct the architectonic aspects of the creative process; rather, enjoy the luminous colors writ large upon this collective canvas, and enter into the conversation as an equal-an active, engaged listener.
- Chip Stern
David Chesky - Piano
Billy Drummond - Drums
Peter Washington - Bass
1. Painting No. 1 04:45
2. Painting No. 2 06:34
3. Painting No. 3 06:59
4. Painting No. 4 05:14
5. Painting No. 5 04:59
6. Painting No. 6 03:52
7. Painting No. 7 06:37
8. Painting No. 8 06:24
Produced by; David Chesky
Executive Producer: Norman Chesky
Recorded, Edited, and mastered by Nicholas Prout
Second Engineer: Janelle Costa
Assistant Engineer: Rich Cerbini
Piano Tuner: Kazuya Tsujio
Recorded Match 13th at The Good Shepard Church , New York
Equipment used : AEA Stereo Ribbon mic, Forssell Technologies mic pre amp, MSB A/D converter, Crystal microphone cables.
Special Thank to Gilbert Soulodre for his brilliant technical assistance.
All compositions by David Chesky (PAMALUC Music)[ASCAP]
