This week's jazz reviews by RAY COMISKEY

LYNNE ARRIALE

Nuance

In + Out Records *****

Arriale's decision to break up her long-standing trio led to this project with Randy Brecker (trumpet/ flugelhorn), George Mraz (bass) and Anthony Pinciotti (drums), and the CD and DVD that make up this fine set. The performances, especially those on the CD, are meticulously developed, yet the attention to detail lets the music grow organically; the solos complement each other in terms of both ideas and dramatic resolution. Arriale's piano, too, retains her concern for melody and the character of each piece, but, in this freshly challenging company, it's more open and fluid, yet paradoxically more maturely individual, than ever. The change has been good for her. Standout performances in a wide-ranging programme include a definitively distinct Wrapped Around Your Finger, Monk-ish Arriale originals Crawfish Gumbo and Yada Yada Yada, and a wonderfully oblique I Hear A Rhapsody. www.lynnearriale.com

GARY BURTON/PAT METHENY/STEVE SWALLOW/ANTONIO SANCHEZ

Quartet Live

Concord ****

This stellar group was on song in this 2007 club date. A long tour helped, as did Metheny and Swallow's time in Burton's 1970s quartet, while "new" man Sanchez is Metheny's long-term drummer. Though the repertoire, by Corea, Jarrett, Carla Bley and Burton, Metheny and Swallow, also has history, this band refreshes the parts other bands can't reach. The euphoric grooving on tracks such as Ellington's Fleurette Africaineand the graceful 3/4 of Hullo, Bolinas, or the trancelike flow of Sea Journeyand B and G,are as much about almost Olympian communion and dynamics as the brilliant vibes and guitar solos they frame. There's also the contrast between Burton's formal elegance – listen to his chordal choices and four-mallet "duet" with himself on Olhos de Gato– and Metheny's more forthright, no less eloquent, statements, to add to the sense of renewal in the music. www.concordmusicgroup.com RAY COMISKEY

VASSILIS TSABROPOULOS

The Promise

ECM ****

Tsabropoulos, whose first solo ECM album, Akroasis(2003) was an otherworldly response to Byzantine hymns, is a pianist who bridges classical music, jazz and near and Middle Eastern music. This second solo CD, with his own compositions, hews closer to the Western classical world. Mostly written, with some improvisation, the performances are so unified that the seams are difficult to detect as he delicately develops simple motifs or melodic cells through constantly modulating aural landscapes. It's impressionistic, as in the song-like Promenade, though not necessarily descriptive – The Other(heard in three subtle variations), Smoke And Mirrors, Pearland The Insiderall probe poetically for the evanescent, not the concrete; for what can only be felt. And, on an album of deceptively simple beauty, Confessionis perhaps the closest liturgical echo of Akroasis. RAY COMISKEY