Laszlo Gardony - Close Connection (2022) [Hi-Res]

Following two daring solo recordings in which he reimagined jazz standards and explored spontaneous composition (2017’s Serious Play, 2019’s La Marseillaise), Hungarian-born pianist-composer Laszlo Gardony reunites with his favorite rhythm tandem of bassist John Lockwood and drummer Yoron Israel on Close Connection, his 11th album for Sunnyside Records. In this highly interactive trio setting, the Boston-based pianist rekindles his chemistry with Lockwood and Israel from their previous simpatico encounters together on 2003’s Ever Before Ever After, 2006’s Natural Instinct, 2008’s Dig Deep, 2011’s Signature Time and 2015’s Life in Real Time.

“It was absolutely comfortable,” says the veteran musician of the freewheeling session for Close Connection. “We’ve been playing together more than 20 years, and after all that time it’s easy to communicate these ideas in my head for the band. Music is always about something that you feel and imagine, not something that verbal communication could really express. Of course, I write detailed charts for my compositions, but they really understand the vibe and the whole feel and meaning of what has inspired the music and what I’m trying to express.”

Close Connection finds Gardony addressing his own roots, specifically folk music elements from Central Europe (a quality he shares with Béla Bartók, whose great appreciation for folk tunes of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia informed his work). That quality comes across on the album’s opener, the Gardony composition “Irrepressible,” which teems with dissonance and distinctive Central European scales, and also on the brooding closer, “Cold Earth,” a collectively improvised piece based on Hungarian folk music scales. “Most of that influence reached me via Bartók’s music,” Gardony explains. “It was around me throughout my childhood.”

Another aspect that comes to the fore on this rootsy project is Gardony’s early infatuation with prog-rock music while growing up in Budapest. But rather than resorting to synthesizers and electric instruments, he tried capturing the energy of that ‘70s music in a purely acoustic setting. He calls it New Prog Jazz. “It’s original acoustic jazz with the brave mentality, strong grooves and the forward-looking style of prog-rock bands I was into as a young person, like King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Deep Purple, Soft Machine and more obscure prog-rock groups like Atomic Rooster and Can. That kind of energy profoundly inspired me at an early point in my life, so I’m looking to recreate that energy on the particular harmonies and melodies that I write.”

Gardony and his gestalt crew also exhibit a remarkable give-and-take quality on the lightly swinging, polyrhythmic jazz waltz “Sweet Thoughts,” the invigorating “Cedar Tree Dance,” which is underscored by a New Orleans-flavored groove, and the African-flavored “Savanna Sunrise,” which has Israel maintaining a trance-like rhythmic figure on the kalimba, while juxtaposing a 6/8 pulse on the drum set, with Lockwood grooving underneath in another time signature and the leader repeating a simple, catchy theme on melodica. “It’s basically four different layers of rhythm,” says the composer. “And somehow it all creates the unity, almost like a gathering.”

Six collective improvs by the trio – including the stirring rubato exploration “All That Remains,” the spacious and moody “Walking in Silence,” the South African-influenced hymn-like “Everybody Needs a Home,” the blazing romp “Night Run” (strewn with brief quotes from bebop and jazz anthems like Dizzy Gillespie’s “Salt Peanuts,” “I Remember April” and Thelonious Monk’s “Rhythm-a-Ning”) and the aforementioned “Cold Earth” – showcase the remarkably interactive quality of this Close Connection.

Recorded at WGBH Studio in Boston, Gardony’s latest recording covers a wide swath of his influences. As he says, “Both the Bartókian elements and these more progressive prog-rock elements live in me in this perfect harmony along with all the great acoustic, cutting edge modern jazz that I love.”

Laszlo Gardony - piano
John Lockwood - bass
Yoron Israel - drums