Juhasz / Theiler V1: Standards CD

Reinvention of jazz standards is certainly what the Theiler - Mezgolits - Juhasz Standards Trio is about here. Each member, having mastered their craft, eschews the possibility of "treading water*, with the command to make it new. Indeed, they do. Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein, Jimmy Van Heusen and Richard Rogers' music from the 1930s sounds as contemporary as any modern jazz composed and performed today. Check out "All the Things You Are" or "You and the Night and the Music," both are presented in the same fashion as the classic Bill Evans trios. Their delivery comes to our ears balanced like an equilateral triangle. This approach of balance/counterbalance is heard throughout to recording and is proof the trio has absorbed these traditional songs completely and are at liberty to reinvent them. "Stolen Moments" has a hip and halting swing where time signatures are constantly changing. This has the effect of keeping listeners, and I suspect, the trio on the qui vive. Elsewhere, the stripped-down version of "Falling in Love With Love" comes across with a childlike naivety where the trio extracts the essence of the composition. There is a joy captured in these reinvigorated standards that propels them into the next century.