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Common Practice

I'd heard of Ethan Iverson on the strength of his playing with The Bad Plus, and suspect that YouTube searches on his name led me to learn about this recent (2019) release featuring Iverson and veteran trumpeter Tom Harrell, whose name I hadn't known, despite its being attached to a discography extending back into the mid-'70s. The other two members of the quartet on this live recording are Ben Street on bass and Eric McPherson on drums.

Superficially, at least, this is a backwards-looking affair. Most of the tracks are tunes that would have already been familiar jazz standards sixty years ago. The playing is refined, tasteful and seldom attention-seeking. It can serve as elegant background music, but paying closer attention is well worthwhile. 

Iverson's piano-playing provides the most obvious points of departure from how these melodies would have been interpreted back in the '50s or '60s: such as in the eerily discordant introduction to 'The Man I Love' - the opening track - where it souds like he's gently summoning a ghostly presence. But it's not just him - the other players all contribute subtle reminders that we're not in the twentieth century any more, as they meanwhile jointly write a love-letter to it.

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