Cyrus Chestnut - Kaleidoscope.Rar (2018)

The jazz piano trio, a specialism with its own lineage and admirers, is currently alive and well thanks to the artists here on KALEIDOSCOPE. A keyboard master such as Cyrus Chestnut can imbue this tried-and-true format -whose practitioners range from Jelly Roll Morton to Robert Glasper – with a relevance for today’s listeners and expand its parameters without losing sight of its historic past. For this recording Cyrus has arranged 8 compositions by the classical pianists W.A. Mozart, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Eric Satie, taking the classical themes through a series of rhythmic and harmonic turns and twists and subjecting them to a wildly innovative series of transformations. Through it all Cyrus Chestnut emerges as a multi-faceted artist who, using the venerable jazz piano trio format, can refract the past through his own imagination and create something new which is always fresh and exciting. Cyrus Chestnut, piano
Eric Wheeler, bass
Chris Beck, drums