Alan Pasqua

Recorded "live" in concert at the culmination of the trio's first tour since the lockdown began, this set reflects the exhilaration found in playing before a hungry audience in a beautiful concert hall. Featuring eight originals and 2 standards, this audiophile-quality album is destined to become a go-to in your music library. Good pasta, great acoustics, a wonderful piano with equally-great drums and bass to play on. "Live In Italy," the Erskine Trio at it's best.

Alan Pasqua's My New Old Friend is mostly a set of sensitive and relaxed trio improvisations. Pasqua, bassist Darek Oles and drummer Peter Erskine, three of the top jazz musicians based in Los Angeles, perform subtle reshapings of five standards which alternate with six of Pasqua's generally introspective originals. One is reminded of Bill Evans (particularly on the standards) in Pasqua's sophisticated chord voicings and the close interplay of the musicians, but that is only a point of reference rather than a direct copy. However fans of Evans' treatments of ballads will certainly enjoy this accessible and thoughtful effort.

West Coast-based pianist Alan Pasqua makes his debut in fine acoustic jazz fashion, backed by a big-name rhythm section: Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette. Michael Brecker contributes smoking tenor on "Rio Grande," "The Law of Diminishing Returns," and "L'Inverno." On "Acoma," "A Sleeping Child," "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen," and Cole Porter's "All Of You," Pasqua swings effortlessly in a subtle trio idiom.

On this focused and passionate record, Alan Pasqua is joined by bassist Dave Holland and drummer Paul Motian – two players with stellar reputations who don't appear together often. Motian's post-'70s playing tends to be free and fragmented, but he approaches Pasqua's material with a straight-ahead sense of swing. The leader, for his part, became known as a synth player following his work with the Tony Williams Lifetime in the late '70s, but here his playing and writing are closer to acoustic post-boppers like Mulgrew Miller and Kenny Barron.

This is a superb and delicious work played as masterful as delicately by a totally acoustic trio. Besides the extraordinary perform of the trio, it is very notable the beautiful interpretation of the perfectly balanced and controlled pianist Allan Pasqua, whose compositions, besides, are really beautiful and stupendous too. Simply, a master work of the contemporary jazz.