Lovely but not lulling: Kenny Barron and trio in Wales

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 In recent releases linked to the consequential sleuthing of Zev Feldman, a fuller picture of pianist Kenny Barron,  often in collaborative roles, has emerged. He is accountable for many of the successful aspects of Yusef Lateef's "Alight Upon the Lake" (Resonance) part of a vast trove of recordings made at Chicago's Jazz Showcase and unearthed by Feldman.

The new "Live in Brecon: So Many Lovely Things" (Elemental Music) finds him in charge at the high noon of his career, heading a trio before a receptive audience in Brecon, Wales, in August 1995. His simpatico trio mates are two stars of their instruments who have since passed away: bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Ben Riley. 

The two-disc set, recorded with revealing detail and care, shows off

Kenny Barron: Mastery in a lovely setting

the trio in a wealth of repertoire drawn mostly from standards freshly interpreted, plus a few originals and three  jazz chestnuts by Freddie Hubbard and Thelonious Monk.

Monk's "Shuffle Boil" honors a fellow pianist-composer with a clever adaptation of the stride piano subgenre that helped form Monk's style. Barron is skilled at drawing riffs out of the main material; his improvisation comes as much from the motif seedbed as from Monk's melody itself.

He has an instinctive sense of structure and a logical way of developing his ideas.  After his long solo introduction to "Time Was," the melody gracefully takes shape as the trio joins. Drummond smoothly makees a key shift in accompaniment, and Riley folds in short outbursts as the trio imposes its personality on Bob Russell's melody. In "Ask Me Now," one of Monk's best, least quirky tunes, the trio establishes and sustains a ballad feeling while intensifying its treatment, especially in a superb bass solo.

On the second disc, Barron's compositional knack for thoughtful ballads comes through in a piece composed for a "precocious granddaughter," "Nikara's Song." Drummond's sensitivity comes through as his upper-register solo carries childlike innocence with it. There's an impressive diminendo by the trio to conclude the track, clearly organic and not a matter of twiddling the knobs. 

A lickety-split "Surrey With the Fringe on Top," in its zest recalling one of my favorite versions, by the Jay and Kai Trombone Octet, is notable for Riley's expert use of brushes and some marvelouos exchanges around the trio.

 The finale of the concert, with torrential applause yielding Barron's spoken appreciation at its most gracious, is "Canadian Sunset." The performance deserves the audience's acclaim because its mid-tempo admiration of the melody takes on considerable harmonic exploration and gains intensity as it proceeds without contradicting the original mood. This gig clearly presents  a stellar trio in top form, its internal rapport unflappable and responsive to Barron's controlling, but never inhibited, genius. 

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