Not your ordinary organ trio

Organ trios easily evoke the blues-based, groovy music of the fifties and sixties played by, for example, Jimmy Smith or Jack McDuff. The instrumentation on This is it, with the organist also carrying the bass duties, certainly fits in here. But that’s where the similarities to the traditional organ trios both starts and stops.

The eight compositions on this record, most by Mikko Innanen, exhibit a broad stylistic and musical spectrum.

The album starts with Cedric Piromalli’s Mocking Bird that joins a hymnal introduction with African-derived rhythms. With deep underpinning by the pedal tones from the organ, Is This It? is a journey towards the realms of free jazz.

Manic Zigaman by Stefan Pasborg, first recorded by the trio Ibrahim Electric is a twisted take on funk. Innanen’s Caribean-flavoured Søhesten, with the composer on sopranino sax, is more than a hint in the direction of Sonny Rollins.

Autonomus XXVII A: Gneisenausstraße 113 seems to abandon most Western traditional melodicism while Riding with Cafarelli is the closest this trio gets to conventional organ trio sound.

That’s a lot of variation.

INNANEN–PASBORG–PIROMALLI: This is it

Mikko Innanen, saxophones
Cedric Piromalli, Hammond organ
Stefan Pasborg, drums

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