“Foot Under Foot” opens the pianist Jason Moran’s third album on a superbly confident and disconcerting gesture: within 30 seconds about half a dozen themes are curtly announced then discarded. Before one is quite ready for it Sam Rivers is already launching into a characteristically turbulent tenor solo over (initially) a completely free rhythm section. It is only as the entire performance unfolds across Rivers’ and Moran’s solos that it becomes clear how the rhythmic cues of each introductory theme are indeed being followed up, incorporating everything from grindingly mechanical repetitions to a powerful 3/4 climax. Such swerves of direction are the stuff of this album. Moran’s reading of Ellington’s “Kinda Dukish,” for instance, is set to a dancing urban beat; halfway through it is absorbed into a strutting improvisation over the death-march coda to “Black and Tan Fantasy.” “Skitter In,” a contrafact on Monk’s “Skippy,” is cousin to “Foot Under Foot” in its brusque, self-interrupting theme decorated with alarm-bell trills. It’s given a performance almost too brief, and it would have been nice to hear it developed more patiently, as Monk’s mazelike, unresolved chord structure is ideally suited to Moran’s style. He owes much to spiky, troublous 1960s pianists like Andrew Hill and Jaki Byard (Moran’s solo feature is an incisive reading of Byard’s “Out Front”). There’s an attractively unfettered, seat-of-the-pants quality to his playing: he unleashes big resonant sounds from the keyboard, making forays into the bassist’s territory with the left hand, hammering a note or letting loose a clatter in the treble. Bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits contribute importantly to the headlong groove, a combination of conventional timekeeping with elements of free jazz and stutteringly urgent rhythms reminiscent of a turntable or a looped sample. Sam Rivers, five decades the other players’ senior, sounds occasionally at some remove from the boiling trio; nonetheless, there’s clearly a good understanding between him and Moran. Though the album is a touch uneven (there’s a slight falling off in the final tracks) it’s nonetheless one of the most rewarding releases of the past year.

Nate Dorward

Coda, March/April 2002