Whether as bandleader, or as a member of the wonderfully named Mostly Other People Do The Killing, New York trumpet player Peter Evans continues to garner plaudits for upsetting the jazz apple cart. Perforating his bop with bolt-from-the-blue electronics, he’s also not averse to gutting the gristle from grisly standards amid other trickster ploys (with percussionist Kevin Shea often being drafted in for the part of court jester).
While never disrespecting the source of his music, Evans’ treatments are far from being cowed in holy deference. Sum And Difference finds Evans at his most demanding, submitting the venerable tablets of tradition to blistering bouts of arson. This trio – with regular Evans collaborators Sam Pluta and Jim Altieri on laptop and violin respectively – reel out their language like a Kenji Siratori novel, spluttering damaged syntax over molten canvas; the players’ conversations are cracked, meanings emptied out from disposable husks: the lifeblood of jazz pervades, profoundly unrecognisable, yet boiling up and continuing to flow.
