Steel House, a leaderless trio made up of Edward Simon (piano, keyboards), Scott Colley (bass), and Brian Blade (drums, pump organ), offers expressive original music whose inviting transparency is suffused with intelligence and grace. On Friday, November 15, the trio will grace the stage at the Outpost for what promises to be a highlight of the musical season.

Steel House was convened out of a desire for an intimate organism that allowed its members, who have long played together in the quartet Afinidad, with altoist David Binney, to expand beyond the typical jazz format and processes. Each of the three has an impressive jazz résumé as a leader—and each is recognized as a virtuoso and a composer of significance—but they were searching for a different dynamic. “It’s a completely collaborative trio,” says Simon. “The three of us contribute, of course, with our playing, but compositions and arrangements and in terms of the production, as well.”

At the outset, they agreed that they did not want the trio to be pigeonholed as a traditional jazz trio. “We really wanted the music to be more expansive, and to include other influences outside of jazz,” Simon says. The trio pulls from a variety of palettes on the album—folk, rock, pop, classical, minimalism, and electronica—exploring other sounds and textures.

“The trio setting sort of offers an even more intimate format, and also dynamically we really play very soft as a trio,” he says. “Our dynamic range is really big because of how soft we play. That can make for very explosive moments.”

The writing on the eponymous first album, released in 2017 as an Artist Share project, is more song focused than a straight jazz album might be. Simon says the group could entertain a guest singer on future recordings to take further advantage of the song form.

A signal characteristic of the trio’s music is that it refuses to impose itself on the listener. Instead, it elicits, conjures, invites the listener in. “It’s up to the listener to decide if they want to be part of the journey or not. All we can do is invite,” says Simon, who says that this characteristic is really a reflection of the members’ personalities.

The arrangements and performances on the album were honed on tour prior to the studio sessions. The special connection that the three have developed over the years is very much in evidence, and the synchronicity meter has its needle pushed all the way to the edge. What’s more, the fact that all three are composers, says Simon, allows them to more efficiently find what is needed for the message of the composition to come across.

The playing has a strong ensemble quality, as each member adds an independent but deeply connected voice to each moment. Listen to Colley throwing light and shade and color on a piano part, or Blade punctuating the message with an unexpected but supremely well-placed accent. “One of the things that I love about [Brian’s] playing is that he’s always giving whatever the music asks for in the moment,” says Simon, and that observation could be equally well applied to both Simon’s and Colley’s playing, as well.

The music ranges from Blade’s through-composed and dignified opener, “Glad You’re Here,” with Colley taking the lead, to the bassist’s “Way of No Return,” which seems to float like an enlivening scent on the air. There’s Colley’s blues-inflected “Kingpin,” his swinging “87.5% of You,” and his “The End and the Beginning,” which begins with the end and ends with the beginning and includes a rapturous bass solo. Simon contributes the questing “What If?,” whose dancing piano discovers an affirmative resolution, and his dreamy “Lover’s Park,” both flavored with keyboard effects, and his song “Country,” which invokes a river’s rhythm with its light-on-its-feet piano.

The trio is preparing to record its second album, and it will be playing the new music on this tour, so the Outpost audience will have a hand in shaping the new material. New material or old, the music of Steel House offers clarity, subtlety, balance, and thoughtfulness raised to a very high level.

Steel House
Friday, November 15, 7:30 p.m.
Weil Hall at the Outpost Performance Space
210 Yale SE, Albuquerque
Tickets: $25 (member/student); $30 (general)
For tickets or more information, click here, or call 505-268-0044.

© 2019 Mel Minter