Jeff Cosgrove has quickly followed up on his Scott Robinson/Ben Filiano encounter Hunters & Scavengers, but Near Disaster is actually the continuance of 2014’s Alternating Current.
That’s because drummer, composer and bandleader Cosgrove is once again running with the big dogs — pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist William Parker — and thriving in a lively session that counts as one of the more consistently spirited performances heard on record in recent years by all three. Coming out digitally on February 28 2019 via Grizzley Music, this reunion of two established jazz greats with a great rising star is a lot about them just letting it all hang out.
For almost the entirety of “Last Steps, First,” Cosgrove’s drums dominate even with Shipp and Parker not exactly shying away from their alpha personalities. Here is Jeff Cosgrove’s trademark timekeeping folded in flawlessly with playing out front. But what stands out just as much as how finely attuned they are to each other, instinctively lowering and raising again the fervor in tight communion.
Shipp and Parker open “October Nights Sky” with their uncanny meeting of minds, ruminating on a figure where they harmonize in an alternate way. Once they achieve liftoff, Cosgrove fully joins in, painting tactfully with cymbals, snare and toms on the group tonal canvas. Shipp drives hard with full chords mixed in with note flurries and Parker provides the harmonic reference points to keeps everyone operating on the same plane. At the end, though, it’s mostly just Shipp and Parker again, but with the bassist sawing poetically and a bit mournfully.
It becomes instantly apparent why the third and final track is titled “Spherical;” Shipp is playing Monk-isms (Thelonious Monk’s middle name was “Sphere”) and the charmingly lopsided style serves as a departure point for the trio. This tune swings, but Cosgrove doesn’t swing like anyone else, playing to Shipp as much as to that rhythm. Through later episodes, the time signature is chucked altogether for a rhythm this is fluid and subject to whimsy, freeing up Cosgrove to partake even more in the give-and-take regularly being undertaken by Parker and Shipp.
The enthusiasm that Jeff Cosgrove, Matthew Shipp and William Parker invest in pushing out the confines of jazz into sweet freedom shines through on Near Disaster.
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