Fumio Karashima Trio

The pianist Fumio Karashima is best known internationally for his long association with Elvin Jones, having held the piano chair in Jones's working bands for years, a credit that already tells you most of what you need to know about his playing. Gathering, his trio date for Three Blind Mice, is the work of a player who has spent serious time on the bandstand with one of the most demanding drummers in jazz history, and the record's qualities reflect it: a strong rhythmic centre, a left hand that carries real harmonic weight, and a willingness to let pieces stretch to the lengths the writing actually needs.

The trio format gives Karashima room to develop ideas at length, and the result is a record that sits comfortably alongside the great American post-Coltrane piano-trio dates of the period without sounding derivative of any of them. A very strong entry in the Supreme Collection, and one of the records likeliest to surprise listeners who only know the label's better-publicised piano-trio names.