***1/2 Michael Moore

MONITOR

(Between the Lines)

Reed player Michael Moore, cellist Tristan Honsinger, and keyboardist Cor Fuhler make music that is both witty and melancholy. This is a Dutch trio, so the emphasis is on focused compositions and vivid improvising. Each piece is like a different game with its own rules. "Gulls" pits a slow, bowed cello melody against frantic twitterings from Moore and Fuhler. "Five Bits" progresses through a series of cues that signal changes from one section to another. "Monitor" is a free improvisation.

Whatever the premise, the trio impose their individual sensibilities, reshaping and personalizing. Honsinger plays the cranky skeptic, agitating the music with fleet lines that test boundaries and the reflexes of the other band members. Fuhler, the youngest of the trio and one of the most exciting new players in Holland, is the good-natured practical joker, lobbing in unusual timbres on the Hammond B3 and keyolin, an keyboard instrument of his own invention. Moore is the pensive philosopher, offering rueful insights and proposing radically contrasting ideas that reverberate throughout a piece. With personalities this strong, any idea, whether written or improvised, is often no more than a suggestion that's open to acceptance, rejection, or transformation. Part of the fun is seeing where these collisions of spontaneous musicmaking and composition take this threesome.

-- Ed Hazell