Avant Suite

Eleven sections in under five minutes, in 3/4, at a waltz-like 86 BPM: ‘Avant Suite’ earns its name by refusing to settle. The piece moves through its A minor center with the kind of conversational looseness you hear in a Bill Evans trio at its most exploratory, the piano line lyrical without being sentimental, the upright bass keeping a walking pulse that holds the whole thing together. The shift around the 55-second mark is the real payoff, where the harmonic and rhythmic interplay opens up just enough to feel like a room suddenly getting bigger. A highlight, and a confident one.