Album Review: Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jake DeJohnette - Somewhere

You'd think that playing with the same people on and off over a 30-year period would create some degree of musical shorthand, particularly if, like this trio of piano, bass and drums, improvisation is usually on the menu. They're renowned for taking the standards and using them as a launching pad into higher improvisatory realms. It's what they do best and it feels effortless. That's what 30 years gives you.

Somewhere is a live recording of performances in 2009 in Switzerland, and sees the trio tackle some pretty divergent material. So perhaps picking up Miles Davis' Solar is not such a stretch from his former band members, yet it's typically lyrical, with a late night smoky feel thanks to Peacock's brush work, while Jarrett's piano commands much of the melodic space.

The tunes here are expansive, deconstructed and reassembled on the fly, chasing a groove that the three of them instinctively know is out there. It's not just the notes they hit, it's their use of dynamics, building crescendos or dropping instrumentation away, clearing a path for a solo. No matter how tangential they get it always feels right. This is their gift.

Perhaps the best example is the title track Somewhere from West Side Story, which begins as a gentle shimmery ballad, yet slowly builds into a driving hallucinatory jam thanks to Jarrett's remarkable piano work, where one hand is repetitive and the other is soloing. Somewhere clocks in just shy of 20 minutes and is revelatory, yet it's only one stop in over an hour of music.

They're the elder statesmen of jazz now, not breaking moulds or starting revolutions; rather they're offering a touch of class, a lesson in the possibilities of jazz when in the right hands.