snobb
Modern days piano jazz trios fortunately are not only Swedish EST-influenced chamber bands,which saturated all possible European scenes. Portuguese Red Trio is a great example how adventurous young musicians can be when they are not searching for easy popularity.
Debuted on emerging Portugal jazz scene in 2010 with their self titled debut album (on Clean Feed label), trio consisting of Rodrigo Pinheiro on piano, Hernâni Faustino on bass and Gabriel Ferrandini on drums in few years became one major player in adventurous European jazz. Their second album (and first international release - on Lithuanian NoBusiness Records)was recorded in quartet format with John Butcher as guest.But it was "Stem" - their third studio album, that made them famous. Here the trio play with another guest musician - known American trumpeter Nate Wooley.
Red Trio and Nate Wooley started their collaboration some month before recording of "Stem" in playing some gigs together and they have excellent communication on this recording. Wooley isn't traditional trumpeter, his sound is rooted more in Bill Dixon music than in Miles Davis'. Nate works with sound as much as with harmony and tunes, as a result his music contains bluesy bop and mouthpiece whistles as equal parts.
Red Trio themselves are fantastic piano trio combining chamber piano elements with quirky rhythm section and never playing straight. Generally, they don't use more traditional jazz repetitive structures or straight melodies at all, but operates with collages of all possible styles at the same time. Still their success lays in their ability to produce quite accessible and attractive music from such a risky brew. Probably, the only moments slightly destroying great whole impression from this album are slow minimalist and very free-form improvs,embed here and there. Not them all sound right in place and even a few moments when happens near nothing can raise lost of attention to far not simple album's music listening.