Kirk Lightsey - Estate (2006)

Three great, different, musical personalities sign this beautiful album, interacting freely on two main grounds of choice: the fervent inventiveness and an extremely mimetic approach, which leads the three musicians to regain possession of the sensibility as well as the formal principles most dear to fellow travelers. Here is Don Moye sinuously bending to the persuasive, soft harmonies of "Estate" with a subtle and refined drumming, full of precious found on the metric and beat plane. His soloism is always full of sudden and multidirectional solutions, in varying the post-baptism trend of the themes signed by the pianist.

All supported by incisive and broken plots, in the name of an equal dialogical comparison. Eccentric wheelies; free forms; elegant and refined atmospheres; rich and varied sounds. These are some of the trump cards of this trio, which thanks to the class of individual musicians succeeds in the difficult intent of making the most diverse improvisational and compositional traditions interact: Africa; cultured citations of academic language; the practice of the mainstream. On excellent levels the test of the chameleon-like Lightsey, in the continuous search for abstract and suspended notes, to better support the oblique and cultured solutions of the magnificent double-bass player Tibor Elekes. His is once again one of the most superb pianisms of the entire contemporary jazz scene, to incorporate two distinct trends in a wise harmonic thought: soft and cantabile sounds, reinvigorated by the angular and fragmented lines of the African-American piano heritage. But all three musicians are equally responsible for this extremely successful and composite journey, which the Italian label Itinera did well to promote and document.~ AAJ Italy Staff

Personnel: Kirk Lightsey (piano); Famodou Don Moye (battery); Tibor Elekes (double bass).