RAY COMISKEYreviews the jazz pieces of the week...

(Another) Nuttree Quartet

Kind of Blue ***

When John Abercrombie (guitar), Jay Anderson (bass), Dave Liebman (soprano) and Adam Nussbaum (drums) got together to remember departed parents by playing old standards, a sometimes leisurely, occasionally hard-driving session resulted, full of warm memories; a kind of mutually assured seduction. If that were all, it would be attractive enough.

But, even at its most relaxed, its filled with a sense of the unexpected, especially from the main soloists, Liebman and Abercrombie, as they address well-worn pieces like Poincianaand I Hear A Rhapsody;even The Party's Overand All Of Medon't quite defeat them.

And despite what is for them unusual repertoire, they serve up fine playing on Lover Man, Besame Muchoand All The Things You Are(with the old Charlie Parker intro). The group's title, by the way, is the English translation of Nussbaum. www.kindofbluerecords.com

Raplh Towner/Paolo Fresu

ECM ***

If this duo collaboration between guitarist Ralph Towner and trumpeter and flugelhorn player Paolo Fresu is a guide, they have forged a fruitful partnership. Throughout there’s an intimacy and ease to their dialoguing that suggests a near-perfect fit between Fresu’s spacious lyricism and Towner’s judicious mix of the spare and the orchestral as a soloist and partner.

The contrast suits their reflective, subtly understated approach, as does the repertoire, which, apart from Miles Davis/Bill Evans's Blue In Greenand a couple of closing spontaneous improvs by the duo, was composed by Towner. Some, like Sacred Ground, heard on solo baritone guitar and in a brief duet with Fresu, the plaintive Wistful Thinkingand the glorious Zephyr, are old; others, like Doubled Up, on whose bare bones, with Towner's help, Fresu thrives as an improviser, are new.

All are undeniably lovely. www.naxosdirect.ie