Jerome Sabbagh, Simon Jermyn and Allison Miller - Lean (2016)

Saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh, Bassist Simon Jermyn & Drummer Allison Miller Debut as Forward-Thinking Exploratory Trio Lean

Sometimes when three busy musicians, all mutual admirers, take the next step and form a trio, new creative avenues open before them and the world of improvised music is richer for it. With "Lean", an album but also a de facto band name, tenor saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh, electric bassist Simon Jermyn and drummer Allison Miller combine their formidable talents in a bristling set of original music. We hear their subtlety and breadth as players as well as their distinct compositional voices. Whether spontaneously creating, or drawing on and reinterpreting works from their own catalogues, Sabbagh-Jermyn-Miller arrive at a depth and beauty as a unit that defies easy categorization.

Sabbagh and Miller are longtime friends and sometime collaborators who came to New York (from France and greater Washington, D.C., respectively) at around the same time in the mid ’90s. Jermyn, originally from Ireland, met Sabbagh years later in Brooklyn and the two arranged to play together. “It felt good right away,” says Sabbagh. “I wasn’t looking to commit to another project but the chemistry of this trio felt undeniable. It turns out that Simon heard me live in Dublin in the late ’90s with the band Flipside on one of my first tours!”

Jermyn composed the title track, “Lean,” and his remarks could serve as something of a credo for the band: “I like words that can have more than one meaning depending on the context. As titles of tunes, the only context is the music itself. I also like when music can be heard different ways in terms of the feelings it might convey, rather than being really explicit. I was going for something like that with this tune.” Toward the end, an ethereal sound emerges in the background — it’s the melody, Jermyn explains, played backwards and up an octave through a looping pedal.