| Parker/Guy/Lytton is already a classic trio, even if this group is continuously changing what we think we know about the music played by Parker with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton. But when they're associated with someone like trumpeter Peter Evans, we can anticipate a journey into uncharted territory. In "Scenes in the House of Music", the quartet with Evans is something else entirely, as is the combination of Lytton, Guy with Evans, without Parker. Any previously released P/G/L improvisation won't prepare you for this. Refreshed, sometimes more edgy, on occasion more "driving" or even "jazzy", here and there with a chamber feeling, the music on this CD is of a particularly high level of refinement – one of trained spontaneity. All the musicians listen before playing, and what they play is in close interaction with what the others do. This isn't only free music, it's also egalitarian music, even given the difference of age between the P/G/L and the band's guest Peter Evans; and in return Peter Evan's respect for the older artists is audible, but it is never reverential. On the contrary, he's always trying to take them out of their confort zones. The really delicious parts happen when the veterans shake the young performer's world, showing him, and us, that they're still the masters of this game. |