Nicolas Masson, Roberto Pianca, Emanuele Maniscalco

Third Reel is the debut album of the Swiss-Italian trio of the same name, with Nicolas Masson on tenor saxophone and clarinet, Roberto Pianca on guitar and Emanuele Maniscalco on drums. Released by ECM in March 2013, it gathers sixteen mostly short pieces, written and improvised, and each of the three composers keeps his own signature. The band has no bassist by design, and the room that leaves is part of its sound.

The group formed online. Pianca found Masson's MySpace page, Masson heard the samples on Pianca's site, and soon Pianca was travelling from Lugano to Geneva to jam. Masson later called it "the first and only good thing that came out of having a MySpace account." Planned without bass from the start ("it means more responsibility for each player, as well as more risk-taking"), the trio tried several drummers until Pianca brought in Maniscalco in 2010, a partner from the band Food Chain. The album was recorded in February 2012 at the Auditorio RSI in Lugano, as a coproduction of ECM and RSI Rete Due. Lara Persia engineered it, and it was mixed and edited with Manfred Eicher, credited as producer.

Masson sums up the methods: the band often plays around Maniscalco's melodies, Pianca's pieces explore chordal colours, and his own writing tends to be contrapuntal. The first two tracks mark the range. Pianca's After All, under a minute and a half, is a study in chords, while Maniscalco's Furious Seasons turns the band into a turbulent power trio. Masson's Orbits unfolds in long, unhurried melody lines over restless drums and Pianca's overdriven guitar. In his Miserere, mallets on the toms set a soft pulse for warm guitar arpeggios and oblique clarinet.

The line-up recalls the trio of Paul Motian, Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano, and reviewers made the comparison. Chris Parker of London Jazz News (August 2013) found the group "more firmly rooted in free music than its illustrious US predecessor" and the album "as original as it is absorbing." In All About Jazz, John Kelman wrote that across these miniatures "Third Reel goes places that Motian, Frisell and Lovano never did."

This is the CD edition, ECM 2314, first released on 15 March 2013.