**1/2

JOEY CALDERAZZO

(Columbia)

After years of accompanying hard-driving leaders including Elvin Jones and Michael Brecker, pianist Joey Calderazzo has earned a reputation as a straight-ahead burner, and he's trying to round that out a bit on this solid if unspectacular trio release sprinkled with ballads and a take on Bill Evans's "Time Remembered." Classically trained from age seven, Calderazzo gets around the keyboard as well as contemporaries like Bennie Green, and he can craft stirring, propulsive solos, as he often does live and proves here on the fine mid-tempo piece "Toonay." But the Monkish-seeming "Detonation" is a dazzling, highly caffeinated race to nowhere until drummer Jeff Tain Watts closes it with a witty solo, quoting from Dizzy's bop classic "Salt Peanuts" during his turn.

It certainly doesn't hurt that Calderazzo, who has released four previous sets as a leader, makes his piano runs in good company. Bassist John Pattitucci is just off a magnificent trio set with drummer Roy Haynes, and Watts is a key player on many of Wynton and Branford Marsalis's finest efforts. The Marsalis touch is here as well, since Branford -- who included Calderazzo in his electric ensemble Buckshot LeFonque -- produced the set and brother Delfeayo Marsalis served as engineer.

-- Bill Kisliuk

(The Joey Calderazzo trio plays at Scullers this Thursday, May 18. Call 562-4111)