The jazz piano trio, a specialism with its own lineage and admirers, is currently alive and well thanks to the artists here on KALEIDOSCOPE. A keyboard master such as Cyrus Chestnut can imbue this tried-and-true format - whose practitioners range from Jelly Roll Morton to Robert Glasper - with a relevance for today‘s listeners and expand its parameters without losing sight of its historic past. For this recording Cyrus has arranged 8 compositions by the classical pianists W.A. Mozart, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Eric Satie, taking the classical themes through a series of rhythmic and harmonic turns and twists and subjecting them to a wildly innovative series of transformations. Through it all Cyrus Chestnut emerges as a multi-faceted artist who, using the venerable jazz piano trio format, can refract the past through his own imagination and create something new which is always fresh and exciting.
