Recent Listening: The Bill Mays Trio Is Back

Bill Mays Trio Live At COTA

Pianist Mays recently reassembled his trio for a concert and their first CD release in more than ten years. Mays, bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Wilson came together in a live performance at last Fall’s COTA (Celebration Of The Arts) festival. The audience at the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, was enthusiastic in welcoming Mays and the trio back to what was his main stomping ground before he began splitting his year between the Pennsylvania mountains and Southern Florida. The listeners were treated to a hand-in-glove relationship among the three that was as strong as ever. Their program began with the Van Heusen/Mercer standard “Darn That Dream” in a medley with Johnny Mercer’s “Dream,”  and went through a repertoire that encompassed pieces by Mays and Bill Evans, and a tribute to Lennie Tristano.  Deer Head Inn favorite Bob Dorough’s “Nothing Like You” is a highlight. Others are an extended, magnetic, version of Jay Livingston’s “Never Let Me Go” and Wind’s firm, poignant solo on Wayne Shorter’s “Infant Eyes.” It is good to hear this finely attuned trio together again.

From their previous incarnation, here are the Mays Trio in his composition with a title that is appropriate at the moment to vast swaths of the United States and many other parts of the world: “Snow Job.”