Pianist Mara Rosenbloom Leads a Magically Hypnotic Trio at the Jazz Gallery

by delarue

At the Jazz Gallery Wednesday night, there was a point where singer Anais Maviel unleashed a serrated, descending, diamond-cut glissando straight out of the Coltrane playbook while bassist Adam Lane pedaled a low E and pianist Mara Rosenbloom filled out the space between with a lingering lustre. Coltrane would have been hard-pressed to replicate that kind of precision. Maviel would do that later, and again the result was spine-tingling.

Rosenbloom came up with the night and the concept: to improvise on the theme of Adrienne Rich’s poem “I Know What I Dreamed.” It’s part of a suite loosely exploring the possibilities of love without exploitation. A challenge, musically or otherwise, under ordinary circumstances; more so by far in the post-2016 election era. To what degree did the music reflect that struggle?

Maviel did the heavy lifting and made it seem effortless, even when pushing the limits of her extended technique via meticulously articulated sputters, playful detours toward scatting or building an accusatory mantra with the poem’s title. Meanwhile, without missing a beat – literally – she played taut polyrhythms on a tom-tom, whether with many shades of boomy grey or a rat-a-tat on the hardware. Was this a cautionary tale to hold onto our dreams lest they be stolen by the trumpies and their dream police? Maybe.

Lane was the center of the storm, whether pulling elegantly against Rosenbloom’s lingering center, bowing stygian washes or pulsing higher up the neck over the piano’s dense but sparkling chordal washes. Rosenbloom didn’t reach for the churning firestorm of her most recent album Prairie Burn, instead orchestrating what seemed to be very Indian-inspired themes. Has she been hanging with the Brooklyn Raga Massive? What a great collaboration that would be.

She opened with a classy, distantly bluesy Gershwinesque resonance and grew much more minimalist early on, with judiciously exploratory righthand against a steady river from the left. Tersely and methodically, she directed a series of wavelike crescendos, Maviel the wild card who’d push one over the edge without a split-second warning. Bass and piano were always there to catch it in a reflecting pool and then bring it to shore: sympatico teamwork as unexploitative love? Rosenbloom finally encored with a solo piece that reverted to echoes of both Gershwin as well as earlier, deeper southern blues, in a Matthew Shipp vein.

There aren’t any upcoming shows by this auspicious trio, but Rosenbloom will be at I-Beam on on Aug 11 at 8:30 PM with Guillermo Gregorio on clarinet and Omar Tamez on guitar; cover is $15. Maviel is at the Freedom Music Fest in Copenhagen, solo, on Aug 31.