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McCOY TYNER WITH STANLEY CLARKE AND AL FOSTER

(Telarc)

A legendary figure on the jazz piano because of his years with the John Coltrane Quartet and his subsequent decades covering ground from avant-garde to big band, McCoy Tyner offers signatures with a thundering, echoing rhythmic pulse and the babbling-brook feel of his cascading improvisational lines. Joined here by an accomplished rhythm section, Tyner explores the possibilities of the trio setting for the umpteenth time. Foster is an unerring timekeeper who rises to the turn-arounds and crescendos without calling attention to himself; Clarke -- whose percussive approach to electric bass is immediately recognizable -- gets more solo space. Although Tyner puts his stamp on a couple of standards, most cuts are Tyner originals, everything from the forceful, seductive "Trane Like" to blues, gently tooled ballads, and a thumping calypso. One funky number appears twice, with Clarke first on electric and then on acoustic bass, and the differences between the two reveal a lot about what lies within a composition and what comes from the instrumentation. In this case, I'll take electric.

-- Bill Kisliuk