Thirsty Ear Recordings 57111 
http://www.thirstyear.com/album_detail.php?artist=Craig%20Taborn&album=Light%20Made%20Lighter

* Craig Taborn: piano
* Chris Lightcap: bass
* Gerald Cleaver: drums

One of the best jazz CDs of 2001. Amazon.com: 
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00005QK7I

Review
~~~~~~ 
http://www.allmusic.com/album/r555357
by Thom Jurek

The second album by Michigan jazz pianist Craig Taborn -- known to most jazz
fans as a sideman to James Carter -- is a giant leap past the adept musicianship
shown on his DIW debut. Taborn's trio, with drummer extraordinaire Gerald
Cleaver and new bassist Chris Lightcap, plays a kind of jazz that's new in a
sense, even though it is rooted in time-honored traditions. In Taborn's pianism,
Andrew Hill and Randy Weston meet Duke Pearson, Horace Silver, and Hilton
Ruiz. There is an elegance of concentration and presentation that exceeds
rhythmic and stylistic rigidities. The opener, "Bodies We Came Out Of" (which
opens and closes the album, making the entire presentation a kind of suite),
echoes the opening bars of "Don't Stop the Carnival" before it moves through
Latin phrasings and textures into a modal openness that shifts toward a funkier,
dirtier kind of blues. In a blazing time signature, Taborn layers sevenths and
ninths over augmented minor chords and plays as rhythmically as
Cleaver. Lightcap, for his part, doesn't just keep it on track; he insures the
entire thing sings by moving the track toward Cleaver, who juices the rhythm and
double-times Taborn. But in his solo, Taborn leaves the melody and undoes the
harmony, filling it with legato phrasing and sharp angular arpeggios that equate
him playing counterpoint to himself. Taborn's read of "I Cover the Waterfront"
is clearly influenced by the man who signed him, Matthew Shipp. Taborn
deconstructs the harmony while leaving the melody intact, coursing over it with
a series of bop arpeggios and moving the entire tune into overdrive before
returning it altered, and simmering from so much trio heat. There is plenty of
balladry left in Taborn's playing, as evidenced in "Morning Creatures" and the
title track, and his blues are blacker than ever as evidenced by the intensely
rhythmic "Whiskey Warm," which pits all three members of the ensemble take turns
shifting the meter against the key changes and dive deep into the funk. This is
one of the best records in Thirsty Ear's "Blue" series thus far, and, more
importantly, it reveals to American audiences what a monster Taborn really is as
a pianist.