Robert Glasper

Album: In My Element (2007) Robert Glasper: Piano Vicente Archer: Bass Damion Reid: Drums

While some jazz labels invest heavily in the remix phenomenon, pumping up the beats and turbocharging the tempo to make dance music for the coffee-bar crowd (as if Billie Holiday’s music needs more impact), piano trios, jazz’s most pristine and discreet setting, have quietly taken over the music. Top practitioners like Brad Mehldau, Jason Moran, and the Bad Plus sell out midsize rock venues these days, and the next wave is arriving quickly, led by 28-year-old Texas native Robert Glasper. His third and latest album, In My Element, is the first significant jazz disc of the year; the music is direct, forceful, inventive, and accessible without pandering.

The Texan-born and gospel-raised Glasper is clearly indebted to contemporary jazz piano greats Keith Jarrett – for muscular, passionate flourishes – and Brad Mehldau, for narrative density and introspective complexity. Like Jarrett, Glasper tries his hand ably at repertoire standards, and, like Mehldau, has a habit of dashing away from melody, dangling percussive suggestions, before deftly returning to the safe ground of the lyric.

In My Element balances these themes finely, yet the most satisfying tunes are the more firmly emphatic ones. On the opener, "G And B", there is a noticeable hip-hop swing, and Glasper’s choppy playing is fast and insistent, yet not over-intense. On "FTB", a choppy percussive break-beat from his drummer, Damion Reid, sets up a funky counterpoint for a romantic piano melody.

It is left to two later tracks, "One For ‘Grew" and "Tribute" for expressions of other strands of African American culture. Voice samples from revered pianist Mulgrew Miller give the former a bebop, smoky jazz club feel and the latter - a tribute to Glasper’s greatest influence, his gospel singing mother, who has now passed on – is soaked in church inspiration, passion, love and deliverance.

In My Element is a strong, refined work in the classic jazz trio tradition. On repeated hearing, early tonal repetition clears to reveal a formidable lyrical voice.