Neil Cowley Trio, Glasgow Jazz Festival review: 'full-on piano'

Neil Cowley Trio, St Luke’s, Glasgow ★★★★

Following a seven-year hiatus after their wonderful Spacebound Apes album, the Neil Cowley Trio have a new album and are back on the road – with a vengeance, as manifested by their take-no-prisoners set on the opening night of Glasgow Jazz Festival.

Neil Cowley Trio | Contributed

The new album’s title, Entity, certainly hints at the tightly organic interplay between Cowley on piano, double-bassist Rex Horan and drummer Evan Jenkins, right from their opener, Marble, the piano’s stately ringing escorted by thrumming bass and drum mallets. The subsequent scampering keyboard hook of Lemon Meringue worked up a mighty groove, not least through Horan’s bass reverberating through our seats.

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Cowley had forsaken the ethereal electronica which can shimmer around his studio playing; instead this was full-on piano, as in the unremitting batter of Sharks of Competition, Jenkins cutting loose on drums, at times making you wonder whether they were being egged on by the toy T-Rex perched above Cowley’s keyboard.

In contrast, Cowley spelled out the spare, lyrical melody of Father Daughter, while numbers such as the title track from the new album, Entity, created expansively rippling arpeggios that the trio could whip into yet another bass and drums storm.

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They closed with a trio of tunes that opened with the beautifully meditative Grace, before cranking up yet more intense drive – jazz piano trio as rock band.

A brief opening set from saxophonist Rachel Duns and guitarist Kyle Hood saw Duns, a former “Rising Star” recipient in the Scottish Jazz Awards, play some rich, jazz-pastoral flute before singing over Hood’s responsive accompaniment. Other songs saw her light, breathy vocals interspersed with her robust tenor saxophone playing before she cajoled the audience into participatory finger clicking, earning a warm response.

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