Over a 30-year career, Frank Kimbrough has placed his intelligently spacious piano playing in a variety of settings, from the intimacy of his acclaimed duos and trios to the large ensembles of the Jazz Composers Collective (which he helped to found) and the Maria Schneider Orchestra (which has brought him to wider attention over the past decade).
The title of Kimbrough's latest offering is a frank admission that Quartet is his first outing as a leader in the classic jazz quartet format.
With the spirits of Andrew Hill, Paul Bley and Bill Evans hovering in the background, saxophonist Steve Wilson, bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Lewis Nash join the pianist in an unrehearsed, open-textured discussion that is refreshingly unclichéd and steeped in the history of the music.
