Sunday night's Improvised Music Company's concert by the Larry Goldings Trio was proof of one of the verities of jazz - that in the hands of a working group of accomplished musicians, a blowing session can be immensely satisfying, no matter how "conservative" the basic concept and instrumentation. With the leader on Hammond organ, Peter Bernstein (guitar) and Bill Stewart (drums), this trio is superbly good, individually and collectively; if there is nothing especially groundbreaking about its work, it is a unit which allows its members to proclaim their own value supremely well. And that is considerable. Goldings is unlike any of his predecessors on the organ. Harmonically, he's more adventurous than most of them; his lines are not easily seduced into the variety of effects the Hammond can provide, which he uses as part of the achieved dramatic point of a phrase, chorus or overall solo. Bernstein is an expressive, gifted player who has absorbed the influence of another visceral performer, the late Grant Green, into his own voice. And Bill Stewart is, quite simply, one of the finest drummers ever to visit here.
As a group, they have a control of the dynamics of each performance which affords them an enviable unity and flexibility, compellingly demonstrated on such as Stevie Wonder's Big Brother, where they established a euphoric groove, loose and swinging, but always under control and with a feeling of power in reserve. Time and again, the degree of interplay was outstanding, whether on a ballad like I Fall In Love Too Easily, a funky The Grinning Song or Subtle Digs, which contained some of the most unfettered blowing of the night.
Apart from a minor mix-up between organ and drums on Milestones, that sense of communal understanding was emphatically evident throughout. At its core was Stewart, whose drive, always supportive and never intrusive, was buttressed by a rhythmic virtuosity that was, at times breath-taking. Hardly surprising, then, that the level of soloing remained constantly high, or that their encore, Sideburns, was the only predictably straight-ahead blues of the night.
