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Trio East’s excellent album Stop-Start opens with a fiery burst of trumpet and drums,
establishing an energy that remains even when the
trio downshifts into more laid-back tempos. The
trumpet motif of the opening track, “Tray-Bo”,
essentially a wailing minor third, drives the piece
forward and lodges the tune in one’s head
long after the album is over.
Trio East - trumpeter Clay Jenkins, bassist Jeff
Campbell and drummer Rich Thompson - are all members
of the jazz faculty at the Eastman School of Music
in Rochester. In other words, they’ve
got chops.
Of the nine tracks on Stop-Start, three
are impressive originals by
Jenkins. The trumpeter by turns delivers rapid-fire
runs and displays a more economic sensibility, sometimes repeating
a two-note figure to develop a groove. While there
are freer passages, as in the original “Late
Bloomer”,
there’s no lack of harmony either, as the
trumpet and bass clearly define the chord structures
of the tunes.
Rounding out the album is the Lee
Morgan title track, tunes by Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie,
Mal Waldron and Ornette Coleman’s “Happy
House”,
a brief coda and showcase for Thompson on drums.
Trio East brought those chops to Manhattan in
April. For its Sunday night gig at the acoustically
challenged St. Peter’s church on the Upper
East Side, the trio was made a quintet by fellow
Eastman prof Harold Danko on piano and Rich Perry
on tenor sax.
After getting adjusted to the venue
on the opening number, Danko’s “Tidal
Breeze”,
where Jenkins’ solo lines followed logically
one after the other, the quintet settled into a
fine set. During Thad Jones’ “Kids
Are Pretty People”,
with its minor key progressions and gospel-like
cadences, Jenkins and Perry traded phrases in a
laid-back dialogue.
Campbell’s
ballad “Song for Ped” was
a duet for trumpet and bowed-bass that took some
riveting polytonal turns. The group closed with
a hardswinging version of Monk’s quirky “Trinkle,
Tinkle”, with trumpet and sax playing the
head in harmony. Trio East
has a good thing going and we hope its next visit
will be sooner rather than later.
— Brian Lonergan
© All About Jazz New York, May 2004
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