Gary Peacock Trio

Gary Peacock Trio – Tangents (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:10 minutes | 940 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Whenever he’s not twisting and turning with Jack DeJohnette in Keith Jarrett’s trio (it’s been going on since 1983!), Gary Peacock focuses on his own trio. Along with drummer Joey Baron and bassist Marc Copland, the American double bass player is releasing his second album with a band of impressive calibre. An album recorded in Lugano in May 2016 and produced by Manfred Eicher of ECM. Much like Now This, also released by the label from Munich a year earlier, there is a Himalayan musicality in this album, owing as much to its leader as to his two sidemen – although the term “sidemen” doesn’t apply here – and throughout which none of the protagonists try to draw attention to themselves. Each one contributes to the repertoire (five compositions by Peacock, two by Baron and one by Copland) and the three colleagues reinterpret Miles Davis’ Blue In Green as well as Alex North’s theme for Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, providing a fantastic base for improvisation… Being one of the main figures that helped develop the role of double bass in the 60s, Gary Peacock has always been particularly attached to the melodic fabric of what he plays. And Tangents is only one more proof of this artistic commitment.

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Gary Peacock Trio – Now This (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:54 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

In the realm of the piano trio the bar is set high, and creative bassist Gary Peacock has helped raise it in the groups of Bill Evans, Paul Bley and Keith Jarrett. ‘Now This’ is an album with the bassist’s current trio, recorded in the summer of 2014 in Oslo and issued in time for Peacock’s 80th birthday (on 12 May, 2015).

Powerful new versions of some Peacock classics – such as ‘Moor’, ‘Vignette’, ‘Requiem’ and ‘Gaya’ – are interspersed with recent compositions. Pianist Marc Copland and drummer Joey Baron each contribute tunes, and the group also tackles Scott La Faro’s ‘Gloria’s Step’. In this band, roles are very evenly shared, and this is an optimum context in which to appreciate the melodic invention of Peacock’s bass playing. Marc Copland always honours the needs of the compositions and Joey Baron supplies both drive and sensitive detail.

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