On the face of it, this is a format (standards, a piano-bass-drums trio) that jazz has turned every which way, including loose, and what's left to offer is merely the reassurance of the familiar of one sort or another. No place for young men intent on making a mark. But when one of them is Mehldau, working with players he has been with, on and off, for the past four years, the reassurance is of a different order. For Mehldau is a rare breed, historically secure musically, yet not pinned down by it, and therefore capable of simultaneously illuminating the tradition and somehow being free of it. His colleagues are the astonishing drummer, Jorge Rossy, and the brilliant bassist, Larry Grenadier, with whom he made half of his 1995 debut as leader, Introducing Brad Mehldau, and all of the 1996 The Art of The Trio, Vol 1, a studio recording. As a trio, they have continually tried to push the envelope out. Here, at times, it's almost to breaking point; there's a cutting edge sense of discovery to the music, yet it remains firmly grounded as the trio expands upon its rhythmic and harmonic possibilities. The pianist finds beauty and space, lyrical and rhapsodic, in the banalities of Moon River, brings off some edge-of-the-seat risks on Young and Foolish and turns the angularities of Monk's Dream to the trio's considerably individual ends.