Steve Lacy Meets The Riccardo Fassi Trio - Dummy (2002)

On Dummy, Steve Lacy meets the formidable Riccardo Fassi Trio in Italy. Pianist Fassi, drummer Ettore Fioravanti, and bassist Gianluca Renzi are a very intimate and intricate unit on their own. All three members are composers and arrangers as well as stellar improvisers. Lacy was walking into a situation where a trio could see him coming a mile off. And they play with him as if he were a fourth member, not a soloist. From the opening of Fassi's own ''Dark Water," written for Lacy, the bandmembers are off and swinging in that off-handed, slightly behind the beat way of theirs, allowing for all sorts of gaps in the jazz slipstream. Fassi's solo, based around a series of two intervals that allows him to play solo and fill the spaces simultaneously, strides right for the area of Lacy's solo that seems the most obvious, then shifts the time signature. Renzi's bass solo puts it on track and the gentle swing all comes back for Lacy. On the title cut, written by Lacy for Alan Shorter, the notion of counterpoint and rhythmic displacement creates a kind of unified dissonance in which no seams are apparent. The long, knotty, intricate melodic line gives way to a blues that falters, strolls, and glides into a tender, floating epicenter of advanced harmonics and blues cadences. The group improvisation "Together" combines all the various modes of expression by the Fassi Trio as Lacy builds layers of his own with ribbons of soprano on top, turning in a bleating cry and whispering song to counter the angular chord voicings and rhythmic rituals put into play by the band. In all this is a very satisfying session, full of light, delight, and even wonder.

Review by Thom Jurek