Robert Glasper

In a lot of ways, 28-year-old pianist Glasper’s band with bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Damion Reid is right in the pocket of the modern piano-trio tradition: elastic three-way conversations among acoustic instruments. And a medium-tempo dance like Glasper’s “One for ’Grew” (for Mulgrew Miller) bears that out: an easy 4/4 over Latin accents. But more typical is the opener, “G&B,” which toggles between the title keys, the tease of a melody cycling through an odd-metered groove. Glasper prefers fragmented statements, short bursts of notes, and slow-developing group narratives to long-lined eighth-note solos. Instead, he, Archer, and Reid create engines of contrary motion, tugging the rhythm and harmony every which way — the fast drum ’n’ bass patter of Archer’s snare and kick, Reid’s lurching syncopations, Glasper stating and eliding the beat. The linear statements come in short right-hand machine-gun bursts; the left-hand chords don’t merely outline the harmonic shape of the piece, they offer commentary — reassuring or mournful — to the agitation in the right. Sometimes the beat breaks into hip-hop (there’s a piece by J Dilla), elsewhere into unabashed romantic balladry (Radiohead’s “Everything in its Right Place” mashed with Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage”). Glasper’s transparent surfaces reveal roiling depths.

Chris Potter

Dave Holland

James Carter

Ornette Coleman

Dave Douglas

Gypsy Schaeffer

J Dilla

The Bad Plus

Jason Moran

Herbie Hancock

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