First published in August 2013. Complex and impossible to categorise American pianist and composer Carla Bley is an almost omnipresent bandleader on the international jazz scene particularly on the European festival circuit, nearly always with bassist Steve Swallow in one of her bands big as in Big, Very Big, or simply small. Andy Sheppard, too, is a kind of saxophone muse and has for many years been part of her musical family. Trios is an album where barriers to full appreciation of her music are torn down. In a sense it’s the candour of the three musicians in terms of expression rather than a perceived simplicity that allows this possibility.

Just five tunes, all of them Bley’s and some of her more familiar pieces, the longest of which is ‘Les Trois Lagons (d’après Henri Matisse)' based on Matisse cut-outs, a composition that appeared on the album 4X4 released in 2000, but here a little shorter. ‘Vashkar’ has been recorded most often of the tunes here by Tony Williams and Gary Burton among others; and Carla herself has recorded ‘The Girl Who Cried Champagne’ a few times. I suppose it’s easy to see the album as some kind of potted retrospective, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it is a tiny snapshot and probably not that representative nor is it meant to be of the breadth of Bley’s work, often tantalisingly outsize or simply ahead of its time.

Andy Sheppard has rarely sounded more impressive particularly on the opener and best track here, the tongue-twisting ‘Utviklingssang’, that goes back to Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra days, on the Time/Life (2016) album while Swallow is as mobile and expressive as he is with the Impossible Gentlemen. This is Bley’s best album since Fancy Chamber Music: the intimacy suits, and there’s a certain grandeur even in the reduced scale, the shrinking of gesture and attitude to abstract portraiture.