Three Masters in a Room, Starting Fresh
Pullen, Peacock, and Williams playing with the directness of a conversation, no agenda but to listen and respond.
New Beginnings was recorded in 1988 with Don Pullen on piano, Gary Peacock on bass, and Tony Williams on drums—a trio of musicians who had spent decades developing their craft separately and now were meeting on these terms for the first time. The session has the feeling of three people who know what they're doing but have chosen to leave their egos at the door. Pullen brings a percussive attack to the keys, nowhere near the avant-garde density he'd explored earlier in his career, but sharp and present. Peacock moves with clarity, his lines conversational rather than elaborate. Williams, the most decorated of the three, sits back and listens before he plays, which is the rarest thing a drummer can do.
What makes this trio work is that nobody is trying to prove anything. The tunes have space in them—real silence, not just the absence of sound. Pullen's comping is minimal when it needs to be. There are moments where the piano drops out entirely and it's just bass and drums, and you can feel how comfortable they are with each other's sense of time. The interplay doesn't sound rehearsed, but it doesn't sound uncertain either. This is the sound of musicians who respect each other enough to not fill every gap.
New Beginnings sits apart from Pullen's other work because it strips away everything decorative. No orchestration, no fusion effects, just three people playing jazz the way it's been played since the beginning—as a conversation. It's a strong trio record, one of those albums that matters not because it breaks new ground but because it gets the fundamentals right. The musicians were all in their later years, and there's something about that which comes through: confidence, patience, and the knowledge that you don't need to say everything you know.
Who's playing
Where next?
More by Don Pullen
All 14 albums →
The musicians on this record
Guamba 1987
Gary Peacock
plays double bass here
plays double bass here
Civilization 1987
Tony Williams
plays drums (drum set) here
plays drums (drum set) here
