Live at Village Vanguard

Pianist, composer, and bandleader Uri Caine takes time out from his myriad projects to record a straight jazz trio date at the illustrious Village Vanguard. For all of his wonderful quirks and musical personalities, Caine is foremost a fine jazz pianist and stylist. Along with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Ben Perowsky, that persona is on display here and it shines in a program of originals, a jazz classic, and standards. Caine's reading of Wayne Shorter's now canonical "Nefertiti" is elegant and stylish; it's full of twists and turns from the modal base and snakes its way through jazz and popular music history in the solo. The ensemble interplay here is almost symbiotic; each chromatic shift is anticipated by the rhythm section and glides into place. On Caine's "Most Wanted," the piece begins with a bluesy Ramsey Lewis Trio groove shimmer before elliptically mutating into a Bill Evans-styled harmonic exploration of the changes and modulations in the tune's melodic intervals — complete with Latin-tinged rhythmic invention by Perowsky. The bopped-out, exceptionally long read of Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" amounts to a strident blowing session with Caine offering double-handed counterpoint at sometimes dizzying speeds. In all, this is a very satisfying date, offering a complex and erudite portrait of the pianist as a monster improviser and an exceptionally sophisticated arranger.