2009 · Album
Farmers by Nature
Recorded Live at The Stone, 2008 · AUM Fidelity · Personnel: Gerald Cleaver (drums), William Parker (bass), Craig Taborn (piano)
Three Players Finding Their Orbit Together
Cleaver brought them together to follow an elliptical path—far out, then close again.
By 2008, Craig Taborn was already a working pianist with a solid history in the New York free jazz scene, but Farmers by Nature marks something specific: the moment Gerald Cleaver assembled a trio around him that would let all three players move at the same speed. This wasn't Taborn's debut or a peak statement—it's better described as a collaboration that found its shape in the room. Cleaver, William Parker, and Taborn had crossed paths before, playing together on Rob Brown's album, but here Cleaver made the deliberate choice to build something from scratch with these two.
Recorded live at The Stone in 2008, the album captures a trio that moves like a three-body system. They shift between locked rhythmic grooves and sparse, conversational exchanges without warning. Down Beat reviewer Bill Meyer heard it clearly: the trio ranges between pulse-based lyricism, surging energy, and what he called gnomic exchanges, as though following an elliptical orbit that pulls them far out before drawing them close again. That's exactly what happens here—there's no wasted motion, no noodling, just three players listening hard and responding.
This isn't Taborn's most celebrated recording, and it doesn't need to be. What matters is that it documents a specific chemistry at a specific moment, the kind of session where everyone knew exactly what the other two were doing. If you're curious about Taborn in a stripped-down trio setting, this is the place to hear it.
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