Signals

Lots of jazz combos engage in group improvisation; very few, in my experience, do so in a way that's worth spending much time listening to-outside the confines of trad jazz, anyway. Trio Linguae (trumpeter/flugelhornist Kevin Woods, guitarist John Stowell, pianist Miles Black) is one of those very few combos. Their musical communication is such that you'll often hear them improvising in counterpoint, which is a pretty amazing feat when you think about it. Nor does their playing ever lapse into self-indulgent noodling: on tracks like their swinging take on the Bill Evans composition "Peri's Scope" and the Harold Arlen standard "My Shining Hour," they sound almost straight-ahead, but even on their more adventurous original tunes the playing is simultaneously disciplined and unconstrained. Any library that supports a jazz education program should consider this album a must-have.