Open Ideas

Very nice trio featuring Oliver Lake (sax), Reggie Workman (bass), Andrew Cyrille (drums) -- wonderful old cats, all. This is casual stuff, not a loud blowout. Mostly straight material that carries some elements of these folks' experience with the World Saxophone Quartet / NY Art Quartet / Cecil Taylor, respectively. Sax solos dominate here, with Lake tossing out all manner of twisty flourishes.

This trio had one other album, on the obscure German label Dizim. Dizim also released a trio album for Miya Masaoka, local koto player, and for that album she recruited the rhythm section of ... Workman and Cyrille! OK, it's not that much of a coincidence, given how much those guys work together, but it's cute.

1- Slow/mid happy blues, with cheesy spoken word. Bad.
2- Midtempo
3- Freely improvised, spaceous and fun
4- Happy, casual swing
5- Mid/fast; energetic sax
6- Midtempo. Repetitious, but gets into some great sax playing
7- Slower, sweeping, a bit searing
8- Mid/fast but sparse, an odd-time exercise by Cyrille
9- Mid/slow; perky and wandering.