Enrico Pieranunzi may have quietly accompanied the fragile trumpet romantic Chet Baker, but anyone who’s heard the great Italian pianist live knows how electrifying he can be when the brakes are off. New Spring, recorded live at New York’s Village Vanguard, catches that, and its temperature is raised to scalding point by an equally uninhibited Donny McCaslin, the saxophonist from David Bowie’s Blackstar band. Pieranunzi can echo Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner, but the contemporary insights of McCaslin and drummer Clarence Penn reforge those methods as if they were new. The anthemic Tyner feel of Amsterdam Avenue is sharpened by McCaslin’s melancholy squeals and staccato figures, while the title track, with its swerving sax theme and contrastingly prancing countermelody, invites some of the venerable leader’s most youthfully muscular improv. McCaslin’s mix of eerily slurred intonation and explosive accents give the ballad episodes a caustic edge, and Pieranunzi veers between old-school swing embroidery and Hancockian drive on I Hear a Rhapsody. New Spring is an old-wine-in-new-bottles set that could hardly have been better named.
