Unusual trios

[danasgoodstuff]

I've been thinking about unusual trios lately.  More specifically about sax/piano/drums lineups like the Lester/Nat/Buddy trio.  I know that there was the David Murray/Geri Allen/Terri Lyne Carrington trio.  But I swear I saw a video of another one on YouTube when I was looking for something else and when I went back to find it I couldn't.  any other examples of unusual instrumentated trios are welcome too.

[mjazzg]

Brotzmann/van Hove/Bennink come immediately to mind

[mhatta]

Benny Goodman / Teddy Wilson / Gene Krupa trio is my favorite.

 

I think Trumpet / Guitar / Drums trio is also unusual.  Kirk Knuffke / Mary Halvorson / Matt Wilson trio is a delight.

 

[jazztrain]

How about banjo, tuba, and clarinet?

M 'N' M Trio:  Jimmy Mazzy, Eli Newberger, and Joe Muranyi:  

 

[Rooster_Ties]

I’ve got a piano-trio date by an Israeli(?) piano player that subs tuba(!) for upright bass (and the tuba player is a little like the guy on all those Rabih Abou Khalil enja albums all thru the 90’s and 00’s).

Can’t remember his name, but I’ll have to dig the disc out and report back.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Rooster_Ties

[Steve Reynolds]

Peter Evans, Agusti Fernandez & Mats Gustufsson

A Quietness of Water / on Not Two records

There is also a great live recording of this trio / both are from ~2012

I chose this as it doesn’t fit into any sort of “type”. it’s freely improvised but it fits under the “sound of surprise” descriptor.

Also Tom Rainey trio with Mary (above) & Ingrid Laubrock. I’ve seen them live numerous times and they are truly spectacular from many vantage points. Hotel Grief might be the best place to hear them on record (Intakt)
 

[Milestones]

A good one is Spirits in the Field: Arthur Blythe (alto), Bob Stewart (tuba), Cecil Brooks (drums).

There's a track on Strange City (Herbie Nichols Project) that I really like: "Blue Shout."  This has Ted Nash (tenor), Wycliffe Gordon (trombone), Matt Wilson (drums) 

News for Zulu: Zorrn (alto), George Lewis (trombone), Bill Frisell (guitar)

Jimmy Giuffre is the master of this, especially the early trios:  clarinet/reeds-guitar-bass & clarinet/reeds-trombone-bass.

 

[Chuck Nessa]

Bobby Bradford (cornet), Francis Wong (saxophones) & William Roper (tuba) have a couple interesting recordings

[Rooster_Ties]

There’s a nice and quite different-sounding 1993 enja trio quartet album with Terumasa Hino, Masabumi Kikuchi (p), and Masahiko Togashi (d) — called Triple Helix.

I had this CD for several years before I figured out the drummer was in a wheelchair and presumably paralyzed below the waist (and I’m seeing now he’s credited with ‘percussion’, not ‘drums’) — which explains his quite unique approach to his instrument(s), which include frame drums too, iirc.

EDIT: I’m just noticing that James Genus is on upright bass too — making it a quartet — but now that I’ve typed all this, I’m NOT just gonna toss it because it isn’t a trio.

My excuse is the title of the album — Triple Helix — has made me think of it as being a trio album all this time! 

EDIT2: The whole thing is a “triple co-leader” thing!! — in that everyone but Genus is co-listed as being a leader on the billing on the front cover (with a pic of just the three Japanese musicians only).

https://www.discogs.com/release/6096366-Terumasa-Hino-Masahiko-Togashi-Masabumi-Kikuchi-Triple-Helix

PS:  Here's a taste (and the cover, as you can see, has just three!!)

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Rooster_Ties

[Milestones]

Fingerpainting: Music of Herbie Hancock is not bad: Christian McBride, Nicholas Payton, Mark Whitfield.  It is rare to hear trumpet in such a small group with no drums.

There's also Parker's Mood: McBride, Roy Hargrove, Stephen Scott.

 

Edited August 20, 2022 by Milestones

[kh1958]

Bangs (Jason Moran, Mary Halvorson, Ron Miles).

[Jim Duckworth]

 

 

[JSngry]

Mitchell/Buckner/Oshita ( or whoever else it will be,)0Yhe Sound Trio.

Heard them love and it was a challenge, the good kind. SO much silence! 

[danasgoodstuff]

Thank you all, I'd knew you'd come up with some interesting stuff and you didn't disappoint.  Not hardly.

[Ken Dryden]

Earl Hines: piano, Red Callender: tuba (track 1), Bill Douglass: drums.

What's unusual is there are two takes of Joe Zawinul's "Birdland," the first of which replaces bass with tuba, something not expected from a swing pianist like Hines. Another surprise is the inclusion of Thelonious Monk's "Blue Monk” and Horace Silver's "The Preacher."

Edited August 20, 2022 by Ken Dryden

[danasgoodstuff]

10 minutes ago, Ken Dryden said:

Earl Hines: piano, Red Callender: tuba (tracks 1-8 & 10), Bill Douglass: drums.

What's unusual is there are three takes of Joe Zawinul's "Birdland," not expected from a swing pianist like Hines.

Earl & I don't always get on, but this version of Birdland is delightful!

[Chuck Nessa]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Mitchell/Buckner/Oshita ( or whoever else it will be,)0Yhe Sound Trio.

Heard them love and it was a challenge, the good kind. SO much silence! 

This reminded me of one I recorded with Roscoe, Wadada and George Lewis (trio for woodwinds, high brass and low brass).

[GA Russell]

Back Door

sax, elec. bass, drums

 

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Chuck Nessa said:

This reminded me of one I recorded with Roscoe, Wadada and George Lewis (trio for woodwinds, high brass and low brass).

L-R-G is a masterpiece.

[Д.Д.]

There are a lot of "unusually configured" (from jazz standpoint) trios in the realm of free improvisation. Some of the classics include

Evan Parker / Han Bennink / Derek Bailey "Topography of the Lungs":

   

ISKRA 1903 albums (Paul Rutherford / Barry Guy and either Derek Bailey or Philipp Wachsmann)  

A fantastic John Butcher / John Russell / Phil Durrant trio: https://johnbutcher1.bandcamp.com/album/concert-moves   

Edited August 21, 2022 by Д.Д.

[soulpope]

[soulpope]

[kh1958]

Chet Baker, Live from the Moonlight (trumpet, piano, bass).

Edited August 21, 2022 by kh1958

[CJ Shearn]

Many of the ECM's I had and reviewed from a few years ago had unusual lineups, one trio was Florian Weber on piano, Markus Stockhausen on trumpet and a bassist I think.  Although not a trio, Kit Downes on pipe organ and Tom Challenger on tenor sax was another.

[Rabshakeh]

On 8/20/2022 at 3:41 PM, Milestones said:

Fingerpainting: Music of Herbie Hancock is not bad: Christian McBride, Nicholas Payton, Mark Whitfield.  It is rare to hear trumpet in such a small group with no drums.

There's also Parker's Mood: McBride, Roy Hargrove, Stephen Scott.

Those were classics of the genre of whatever the hell it was Verve was doing in the 90s.

Is no-one mentioning the Schlippenbach trio for piano, saxophone and drums?

Likewise Yosuke Yamashita's stuff from the 1970s.