• List Price: $14.99  
• Your Price: $14.99
• In Stock: 106

You must login to place orders.




Not purchasing for a business? See our consumer site.

The first time that bassist Jeff Denson and guitarist Romain Pilon got together to record with drummer Brian Blade felt like a lightning strike. Like so many musicians before them, the longtime friends from their days as standout students at Berklee experienced what's often been described as the Blade Factor, a sudden, clarifying jolt that illuminates the musical moment. Captured in the studio on the 2019 Ridgeway Records album Between Two Worlds, the trio's debut introduced an uncommon communion that seemed destined for further adventures.

Even two years of pandemic angst hasn't been able to dim their brilliant chemistry. If anything, the trio's second album, Finding Light, blazes all the more brightly as an antidote to isolation, anxiety, and despair. Slated for release on Denson's Ridgeway Records label on September 23, 2022, the project beams with the palpable pleasure the musicians take in each other's company as they explore new music together in glorious trialogue.

Denson spent the first 18 months of the pandemic keeping the California Jazz Conservatory running online as dean of instruction. Though two years had elapsed between the trio's last tour and regrouping to record Finding Light, they picked up where they left off, exploring a "sound that evolved because we did a lot of playing and traveling together in 2019 and 2020," Denson said. "Each time we played together the band kept growing and our sound and direction evolved. Our connection kept intensifying."

That intensity is evident throughout Finding Light. The trio's new music reflects both the unbridled joy of gathering together again and the small pleasures (particularly the fur-bearing variety) that eased the surreal passage of pandemic time.

Track Listing

Press Quotes

Finding Light is the second album from this trio, which doesn't present itself as having a leader but, in reality, seems functionally to be led by bassist/composer Jeff Denson. Six of the album's ten tracks are Denson compositions, while four are by guitarist Romain Pilon. All of the tunes dance a careful but joyful line between straight-ahead and modern/free jazz, with diversions into funk (the fun and knotty 'This Way, Cooky') and into music that feels oddly abstract despite its obviously careful construction ('Wishing Well,' which drifts from balladic decorousness into gentle funk). Drummer Brian Blades was made for this stuff, and he provides a strong rhythmic through-line while contributing his own pointillistic flourishes. Although the music itself sounds nothing like Bill Evans, there's an echo of the classic Evans-LaFaro-Motian trio's dynamic here, with each member contributing equally to the overall sound. Highly recommended.

     —Rick Anderson, CD HotList December 2022