Over time, gifted player/composers sometimes sideline the first skill in favour of the second – but not Django Bates. He shines still more brightly as a piano improviser in his 50s, as he confirms on this ECM debut of the Belovèd trio he originally formed to play Charlie Parker’s music. The boppish Passport is the only Parker tune here, all the others are the leader’s. Often unfamiliarly tender and contemplative by Bates’s wayward standards, the session continues to foreground this close-knit threesome’s fondness for letting spontaneous ideas go where they will, rather than sustaining one dominant mood. The mixed-tempo dance of Giorgiantics is full of one-touch dialogues with bassist Petter Eldh and drummer Peter Bruun; We Are Not Lost, We Are Simply Finding Our Way imparts jolting Batesian disruptions to a sometimes Bill Evans-like grace; Peonies As Promised suggests a Broadway standard in its lilting unison piano/bass theme, but nobody but Django Bates in its impulsive scurries toward resolutions. A session by a master improvising composer, and in ideal company.
