Differing Styles Flashed Amid Staccato Rhythms

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

By NATE CHINEN, Published: July 3, 2013
Phronesis finished its late set at the Jazz Standard on Tuesday night with a dynamic précis, the sort of tune that sews up everything you need to know about the band. It was “Abraham’s New Gift,” by the bassist Jasper Hoiby, who set up its slanted rhythmic scaffolding with a quick, complicated ostinato, his long fingers flying across the strings.


He was joined momentarily by the pianist Ivo Neame and the drummer Anton Eger in a clattering 15/8 meter before a slight but evocative melody appeared. Eventually the groove relaxed into a flowing 7/8, but then it was back to the grid. Each musician took a solo that suggested a hastily drawn portrait of his style: insistent and bouncy for Mr. Hoiby, methodical and temperate for Mr. Neame, feverish and shrewd for Mr. Eger.

These ingredients, well simmered and briskly stirred, have made Phronesis the toast of progressive jazz in Britain, its home. The trio is actually more Scandinavian than British — Mr. Hoiby, its leader, is Danish, while Mr. Neame is a Briton and Mr. Eger a Swede — but it firmly belongs to London’s jazz cosmopolis. (It’s one of about 20 bands in Loop Collective, a consortium of youngish composer-improvisers formed in 2005.)

Over the last 15 years or so a new set of options has solidified for acoustic piano trios with a European bent. Phronesis fits neatly into this framework with a style that finds use for classical harmony, glassy texture and rocklike cadence.

Its ancestral origins have something to do with Keith Jarrett’s music in the 1970s, but one more recent touchstone is E.S.T., the popular Swedish trio formerly led by the pianist Esbjorn Svensson, who died in a scuba accident five years ago. When the editor of Jazzwise, a British magazine, hailed Phronesis as “the most exciting and imaginative trio since E.S.T.,” it was understood as high praise.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/arts/music/phronesis-european-jazz-trio-performs-at-jazz-standard.html?_r=0