Daydream - The Music of Duke Ellington

According to the most recent calculation, English pianist Pat Thomas (b. 1960) has released as many as eight records this year: two in a quartet, two in a trio and four on his own. The latest include the acoustic solo piano work The Solar Model of Ibn Al-Shatir (2024) and the electronic solo album This is Trick Step (2024), which has been described as “abstract hip-hop” – surprisingly but without exaggeration.

But there is something you have never heard before: his unrecorded Daydream ensemble, who is going to have their second ever concert at Tampere Jazz Happening – nearly three years after the first one at Victoria Jazz Club in Oslo. Still, those familiar with the history of bebop jazz – and perhaps others too – can expect to hear some familiar tunes as Thomas, double bassist Per Zanussi (b. 1977) and drummer Ståle Liavik Solberg (b. 1979) will play the entire Money Jungle (1963) album, a bit of a speciality of its time. Like the afternoon concert at Pakkahuone, the album brought together two generations of jazz musicians, albeit of a completely different status. Recorded in New York on a September Monday, Money Jungle was led by the 63-year-old pianist-composer Duke Ellington, accompanied by Charles Mingus on bass and Max Roach on drums in their forties.

Even if you are familiar with the extensive and wide-ranging catalogue (around 70 albums) of Thomas, who has one concert in Finland under his belt, the trio’s Ellington interpretations can offer something unexpected and counterintuitive. As a pianist and ensemble leader, Thomas is above all an improviser who excels at the deep end of free jazz. But of course, Thomas knows Ellington and has reconstructed his compositions in solo concerts on at least two recordings.

Despite its name, the trio is not a daydream of Thomas. The collaboration was suggested by the Norwegian duo of Solberg and Zanussi, who have a long history of playing together “honest” and “proper” jazz with a rotating cast of musicians in Skikkelig Jazz Trio – as the Norwegian word “skikkelig” implies.