You won’t get much luck if you search the Net looking for the mi3 band recorded in this CD. Websites about the third sequel of the movie “Mission Impossible,” with the megastar Tom Cruise, will open in your monitor with a nerve breaking insistency. The funny thing is that the three guys playing here, Pandelis Karayorgis, Nate McBride and Curt Newton, are also involved in a mission that, if not impossible, is at least very difficult: to give a continuity to a jazz pattern, the piano trio, which seems to have travelled all its way. And truth is they manage to do it, even if without the incredible gymnastics we see Cruise dealing with on the big screen. “Free Advice” is not just one more piano-double bass-drums opus, but a record you certainly going to cherish and listen repeatedly. The early release in the Clean Feed catalogue of the mi3 people, “We Will Make a Home for You,” doesn’t prepare you for what you’ll find here. Instead of the Fender Rhodes and the setting of that vintage instrument in a 21st century context, Karayorgis plays now a Grand Piano at maximum effect. And there’s also old tunes with new clothes, namely in the case of Duke Ellington’s “The Mystery Song,” revised through the interpretation of that same piece by Steve Lacy in “Evidence.” What a joy! |