Bruce Barth Trio
Live at Smalls (Smalls Live)
Bruce Barth is a potent poet at the keys. Looming on the fringes of renown, he certainly deserves the attention of discerning jazz-piano fans. For his latest in a scattered discography stretching back nearly 20 years, Barth manifests a strong identity, technical bravura tempered by tasteful musicality, and a sense of adventure.
A long list of musicians – including Kurt Rosenwinkel and Brad Mehldau – have honed skills and launched careers at the intimate Smalls. Captured live at the Greenwich Village jazz club, Barth’s set of mainly originals is a deceptively casual affair, even as it confirms the mid-career pianist’s deepening musical voice.
Joined by sensitive allies Vicente Archer on bass and Rudy Royston on drums, Barth exerts all the right stuff, as both fluent player and improviser and as composer of solid, varied tunes. Affirmative energies greet the ear with the opening “Oh Yes I Will” then settle into the
Bill Evans-like waltz “Sunday.” Vestiges of slinky soul-jazz creep into “Peaceful Place.” And “Afternoon in Lleida” luxuriates in a relaxed blues pulse, followed by the feisty cadences of “Wilsonian Alto.” The trio cool down on the album’s only non-original, a fresh look at “Good Morning Heartache.”
The sequence ends on another positive note with the aptly titled “Looking Up.” More than nine-minutes long, it’s a lovely, simple tune with an implied Brazilian feel. It also has that rolling, vamping, infectious gospel spirit that invites late-night lingering in close, magic rooms like Smalls, when the musicians are in proper artistic alignment with the audience and the space.
— Josef Woodard
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