Gary Peacock Trio

Tangents is the second ECM album by the trio of bassist Gary Peacock with pianist Marc Copland and drummer Joey Baron, after Now This in 2015. Peacock was 82 when it was made. He had helped to give the bass an independent melodic voice in piano trios led by Paul Bley, Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett. This group is more open and democratic, moving freely between written tunes, free improvisation and quiet swing, with long stretches of unaccompanied space for each player.

Peacock has played with Copland since the early 1980s, in formats from duo to quintet. He found Baron after the two of them shared a quartet with Lee Konitz and Bill Frisell, and a week at Birdland convinced him this was the drummer for the trio. The album was recorded in May 2016 at the Auditorio Stelio Molo of RSI, the Swiss radio in Lugano, a small hall with the trio set up on stage. Stefano Amerio was the engineer and Manfred Eicher produced.

Peacock wrote five of the eleven pieces, Baron two and Copland one. The opener Contact begins with a long solo statement on the bass before piano and drums join. Empty Forest is a seven-minute free improvisation, introduced by Baron's drums. In the liner notes Peacock says the only instruction was "start". The trio also returns to December Greenwings, which Peacock first recorded on December Poems in 1978. Two pieces tied to Bill Evans close the circle, Miles Davis's Blue in Green and Alex North's love theme from Spartacus.

Writing in The Irish Times, Cormac Larkin heard music that "veers from ruminative abstraction to tender lyricism to joyous swing". Karl Ackermann of All About Jazz called it "one of the best piano trio albums in some time." Brian Marley, in London Jazz News, described a democratic group whose push and pull is clearest on the title track and on Empty Forest. He added that Peacock's own tunes are sparse and open-ended, a good stimulus for improvisers.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2533, first released on 25 August 2017, in a jewel case with a slipcase and a 12-page booklet.