Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, Paul Motian
Released
Talk about a supergroup, or a summit meeting. Three superstar jazz musicians, each with a very different stylistic background, coming together to make an album of both standards and originals and creating something simultaneously unique and traditional. The program opens with a splayed blues (“Eighty-One,” cowritten by Carter and Miles Davis) and proceeds to cover the traditional “Pretty Polly,” a Thelonious Monk obscurity (“Raise Four”), and a gently jaunty take on “On the Street Where You Live.” You could probably call this a straight-ahead jazz album, but it always sounds just off-kilter enough to make you sit up and listen hard.