''Trio Transition'' is the fourth studio album by American jazz pianist

Mulgrew Miller Mulgrew Miller (August 13, 1955 – May 29, 2013) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator. As a child he played in churches and was influenced on piano by Ramsey Lewis and then Oscar Peterson. Aspects of their styles remained in ...

together with drummer Frederick Waits and bassist Reggie Workman. The album was recorded on December 16, 1987 in Tokyo when that ad-hoc trio toured there, and released on the Japanese label DIW. The record was remastered in 2008 and re-released. The trio also released the album '' Trio Transition with Special Guest Oliver Lake'' in 1988 which was recorded in New York.

Reception

Ken Dryden of

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

noted that: "this is the first of the only two CDs they recorded for DIW prior to Waits' death in 1989. The two standards include a driving version of "I Hear a Rhapsody" and an easygoing "Like Someone in Love," though most of the session focuses on originals. Miller contributed three songs, including the constantly shifting post-bop vehicle "No Sidestepping," the unusually structured ballad "Whisper," and the thoughtful hard bop tune "Second Thoughts," the latter a tune that shows the influence of James Williams, with whom Miller had recorded previously while working with

Art Blakey Arthur Blakey (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after he converted to Islam for a short time in the late 1940s. Blakey made a name for himself in the 1 ...

. Workman's "Shades of Angola" is introduced by Waits' furious solo before taking shape as a brisk samba as the others join the drummer. Waits' tense "Two Faces of Nasheet" (dedicated to his son, who also took up the drums) is easily the most exotic offering of the date, delivering a Far Eastern flavor and a hint of John Coltrane in Miller's McCoy Tyner-like solo, though it also shifts back and forth into a more conventional ballad setting."

Reception

Track listing

Personnel

References