One of the most interesting and fruitful ongoing projects in jazz, the In Common series from saxophonist Walter Smith III and guitarist Matthew Stevens brings together a new set of players for every album. For III, the pair brings in some real badasses: pianist Kris Davis, drummer Terri Lynn Carrington and bassist Dave Holland. As anyone who’s ever heard any of these players in other contexts knows, there’s a lot of firepower here. But III is no head-cutting contest, where each player tries to outdo the other. Instead, these musicians come together to explore their universal interests in melody, harmony and improvisation through the lens of Smith and Stevens’ compositions.
“Loping” is an excellent example of this approach. Stevens’ tune bursts with melody, and the ensemble performs it like different facets of a single diamond. The guitarist’s “Prince July” follows suit, its suitability for jazz radio (if it’s a cool station) making it practically a companion to “Loping.” The band also demonstrates its like mind on Stevens’ “Hornets,” which creates a tension not unlike the musicians trying to maneuver around the titular beasts, and “Reds,” a bustling piece that incorporates bebopping Smith sax, Davis piano that shifts from tango-like comping and free jazz riffing with ease, and a masterful Carrington drum part that will induce both admiration for the fills and movement in the hips. Smith’s Latin rhythm-influenced tunes “After” and “For Some Time” also benefit from the group’s pursuit of visionary consensus.
There’s plenty of variety here. Smith contributes the appropriately titled “Familiar,” a swinging cut that could have been found on a Blue Note, Riverside or Impulse! record from the sixties, but also “Variable,” a piece with a structure loose enough for everyone to play freely, allowing Holland and Davis to dance busily around each other. Stevens can go from the ballad “Miserere,” probably the most starkly beautiful song on the record, to “Orange Crush,” which boasts an angular melody that sounds more like early eighties King Crimson than what purists might call jazz.
To really put the chemistry to the test, Smith and Stevens engage Davis in a series of improvised trio pieces that explore spontaneous composition and push the boundaries of the genre in which they allegedly rest. “Dust” settles into compositional minimalism by default, as if the players discussed the direction in which they would head beforehand, while “Oliver,” “Lite” and “Shutout” add strange guitar noises and near-ambient piano chords under Smith’s exploratory horn. The leaders strip things down even further with “Shine,” a saxophone/guitar duet (something the pair traditionally includes on these records) written by Smith that pays tribute to the jazz veterans lost in 2021.
Smith and Stevens follow what seems like an obvious formula: write some strong tunes, and get some equally strong players to record them. That conceptual simplicity makes In Common III both easily accessible and creatively brilliant.
