Mesmerism is a beautiful, swinging trio meeting led by drummer Tyshawn Sorey featuring two musicians whom he has considered his closest colleagues: pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Matt Brewer. Sorey – a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, collaborator with Vijay Iyer, Kris Davis, Roscoe Mitchell, Hafez Modirzadeh, Myra Melford, Marilyn Crispell and other musical luminaries – puts forward his vision for Mesmerism as follows: “My intent was to record this project with only an hour or two of rehearsal, and with a group of musicians who never performed on stage together. To that end, Mesmerism is a departure from the recordings I produced that contained thoroughly rehearsed, rigorously notated music for piano trio. For a long time, I felt an intense desire to record some of my favorite songs from the Great American Songbook as well as those by composers whose work I feel should also exist in this canon. Recording Mesmerism with these two wonderful, inspiring musicians inevitably proved to become the finest occasion for me to document my lifelong connection to the ‘straight-ahead’ continuum of this music.”
In listening to the five years of the Brad Mehldau Trio represented in this box set, one hears the unfolding of a new and significant part of modern jazz history, as the end of the 1990s opened the door on the explosive creative renaissance of the music in the 21st century. Nonesuch has compiled the five releases in the Art of the Trio series, as well as an additional disc of unreleased recordings from the same period (1997-2001), offering a serious reconsideration of what has already been accepted as a "next step" for the jazz piano trio's history. On Vol. 1, Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier, and Spanish drummer Jorge Rossy intriguingly and seductively begin uttering the first sounds of their new language via Mehldau's originals, such as "Lament for Linus" and "Ron's Place"…
Florilegium’s latest release contains the complete instrumental trio sonatas of Bach. But if you discount the six-part Ricercar from the Musical Offering itself, which of course is not a trio, but which nonetheless is included here, only two of the remaining items are indisputably products of Bach’s pen. The Trio in G (BWV 1038) may be by Bach, who certainly provided its bass line; but the likelihood is that it was the work of one or other of his two elder sons or perhaps one of Bach’s Leipzig pupils. The Trio in C (BWV 1037), on the other hand, is certainly not by Bach, but by his gifted pupil, Goldberg.
Johann Nepomuk Hummel was one of the finest composers bridging the gap between the Classical and Romantic eras. His teachers included Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, and Hummel learned his lessons very well. His music is notable for its harmonious treatments, expert architecture and never-ending string of attractive melodies.