Unforeseen

Pianist Chad Lawson and his trio with bassist Zack Page and drummer Alfred Sergel primarily perform easy listening jazz on this set. They interpret four of Lawson's originals, a song apiece by Sting, the Beatles, and Christopher Cornell, and four standards. The music is actually more diverse than the treatments, for nearly every selection is taken at a slow thoughtful tempo. The trio's heartfelt and melodic renditions are excellent and they communicate well with each other, but this set would have benefited from more tempo and mood variations. That way it would rise above the level of superior background music.