The idea that some news doesn’t age might be one way of looking at an album on which Thelonious Monk and John Martyn material, classics of bebop and 1970s English troubadour folk respectively, hang together.
I’d love to hear Green accompany Ian Shaw, a big John Martyn fan, on ‘May You Never’ at some future jam given the pianist’s affinity demonstrated here with the Solid Air song.
There’s no bass instrument let alone a singer as this trio doesn’t seem to need either given Green’s consummate skill as an accompanist, arranger and all-round musician.
He’s collaborating here with two Americans, saxophonist Chris Cheek, the emotional fount of all feeling on the album (his sound teetering towards Joshua Redman’s a little on ‘May You Never’ the easy stand-out) and a less-likely drummer than you’d expect in avant garde hero Gerald Cleaver. Great News was recorded in Brooklyn last year.
Song reminder... John Martyn and ‘May You Never’
I’m not sure if everything quite gels but it is definitely the beginning of something new and inspiration-laden for Green, who mostly has made his name in recent years backing singers or visiting Americans as tastefully as you could ever wish for in a style that often lands somewhere between Kenny Drew and Pete Saberton.
Let’s hope this New York Green trio come together again after their September tour to record every few years. I’m sure this is just a statement of intent but it’s a tasty beginning.
With wide ranging selections, modernists will especially be interested in the version of Paul Motian’s ‘The Owl of Cranston’, while no slouch in the writing department himself Green includes his own tune ‘Stubblerash’ and the trio combine to collaborate on tributes to both Cedar Walton and Mulgrew Miller.
Definitely not just a case of yesterday’s fish-and-chip paper, this news is more the first draft of a little history of Green and the trio’s own in the making.
Released on 18 September