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Kit Downes Trio

Golden

Basho Records SRCD 31-2

A pianist with impeccable credentials (he's played with Empirical, Troyka, the Golden Age of Steam and Fraud, as well as with champion talent-spotters Clark Tracey and Stan Sulzmann), Kit Downes, in perhaps the trickiest musical situation of all – the debut album as leader/composer – has produced the goods yet again.

The album's opener, 'Jump Minzi Jump' (inspired by a cat featured in a programme made by our Greatest Living Englishman, David Attenborough), sets the tone perfectly: spun out from an infectiously catchy hook is an increasingly intense, pleasingly convoluted, piano solo propelled by a fiercely interactive but subtly sensitive rhythm section: fellow Royal Academy of Music students (class of 2005) bassist Calum Gourlay and drummer James Maddren.

Subsequent tracks deftly repeat this formula, their apparently fragmentary melodies giving rise to consistently powerful, muscular trio explorations that demonstrate the value and effectiveness of the mutual understanding that springs from longstanding musical partnerships.

Both Brad Mehldau and Keith Jarrett are frequently cited as Downes influences, and there is indeed a hint of the rapt self-absorption associated with the Americans in Downes's approach, but perhaps more readily discernible is an influence he himself cites: that of his 'friend and teacher', Tom Cawley, to whom the album's closing track is dedicated. An assured and polished album that reveals fresh felicities each time it's played.