Various preoccupations have slowed my listening and reviewing, so to pick up some of the slack, “Something for Everyone” features short reviews of six groups, covering a wide range of styles and sensibilities. Featured artists in part 1 include the Virg Dzurinko/Ryan Messina duo, Leslie Pintchik trio, and Florian Hoefner trio.

Ryan Messina and Virg Dzurinko
This Time (New Artists)
A review
Fearless trumpeter Ryan Messina and chroma-intense pianist Virg (rhymes with urge) Dzurinko, both of whom can trace their jazz lineage back to Lennie Tristano, intended to record some original compositions and few standards for this album, but between takes they loosened up with some intuitive improvisation (a term that Carol Tristano and I came up with in a discussion about this post a few years ago). Basically, one or the other would say a word or a phrase, and they would begin improvising with that in mind, with no discussion beforehand and no editing afterward. As they say in the liner notes: “We just listened to each other and followed the sound and the feeling.” On hearing the playback, they altered course and set about creating a full album of these improvs. Deep listening and trust are the prerequisites for doing this successfully, and these two have those qualities in spades, allowing them to create coherent, compelling compositions almost out of thin air. Magic. They use every sound available from their instruments, covering a wide sonic range from crystalline sublimity to expressive raspberries. For the listener, it feels a little like you’re eavesdropping on a private, collaborative meditation. The pieces offer a variety of feeling, from the otherworldly “Prelude” to the almost programmatic “Downpour;” from the mysterious “Walking Through” to “Third Line,” a rollicking and bluesy take on New Orleans’ second line; from the luminous chamber music of “Light on Water” to the romantic “Lunar.” To fully appreciate these gems requires that the listeners give themselves up and listen with the same intensity as the artists.

Leslie Pintchik Trio
Same Day Delivery (Pinch Hard)
A review
I’ve been wishing and hoping for pianist Leslie Pintchik to put together a little Southwest tour that would pass through the Outpost here in Albuquerque. That hasn’t happened yet, but Same Day Delivery makes an admirable placeholder until it does. With her colleagues Scott Hardy (bass) and Michael Sarin (drums), Pintchik delivers a fully satisfying live set, recorded on a Wednesday evening at Jazz at Kitano in New York City. The recording was made so that Pintchik could listen to the performance later. Doing so, she discovered it was worth sharing with a wider audience. Her characteristic clarity of line, deep feel for groove, and deft chording are here in abundance, as are her sprightly energy and sly, puckish humor. Three standards get the Pintchik treatment: “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” rendered as a samba; “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” which makes peace with the startling idea that one has fallen in love; and a loose-limbed and swinging “Falling in Love Again.” The remaining six are worthy Pintchik originals, among them the tightly wound “Terse Tune,” which burns up on reentry; “Your Call Will Be Answered by Our Next Available Representative in the Order in Which It Was Received. Please Stay on the Line; Your Call Is Important to Us,” with its Monkish touches; and the funky “I’d Turn Back If I was You.” (I’d love to hear Monk work out on her “There You Go.”) Pintchik and her colleagues offer a master class on trio interplay, and their determination to serve the music and not their egos captures your ears and your heart.

Florian Hoefner Trio
First Spring (A L M A Records)
A review
On First Spring, pianist/composer Florian Hoefner sets himself the challenge of translating some of his favorite traditional tunes into a jazz setting, and as we have learned from Luminosity and Coldwater Stories, there is nothing Hoefner likes better than a musical challenge. The primary challenge on First Spring is in the arranging. How do you translate fiddle-centric folk tunes into a piano trio environment? First, you bring in bassist Andrew Downing, whose remarkably skilled arco work perfectly displaces the fiddle. Hoefner hands him a lion’s share of the melody work. Then, you add drummer Nick Fraser, whose subtle, understated work is a perfect complement to the task at hand. Hoefner manages to maintain the unguarded simplicity of the source material while layering in a variety of jazz stylings that expand on the tunes, balancing the fateful certainty of the folk tunes against the fluid uncertainties of the jazz idiom. So on the iconic “Hound’s Tune,” a reel by the late Rufus Guinchard, he alters the rhythmic formula on each go-round, “playing with the duality of 3/4 and 4/4 time signatures in a 12-beat cycle,” as he explains in the liner notes. Hoefner reharmonizes every tune to one degree or another. In addition to the six traditional tunes, Hoefner adds three sturdy originals that maintain the folkish vibe. Standouts include the aforementioned “Hound’s Tune;” the deliciously dark “Calvary,” originally recorded on Levon Helm’s album Dirt Farmer; and the visceral “Rain and Snow,” inspired by fok artist Sam Amidon’s recording of the tune.

© 2019 Mel Minter