WEDNESDAY February 25th, 8pm : ROSS HICKS TRIO Trio @THE OBSERVATORY

Before the 1960s – and a while after that in most places – a jazz piano trio consisted of a pianist doing nearly all the work and a bassist and drummer simply underpinning the tempo and rhythm. Now and then, the last two were allotted solo spots, often out of deference to skill sets buried in routine and repetitive accompaniment.

Everything changed with the Bill Evans Trio. Pianist Evans wanted to get away from this idea of a main player and two subordinates and substitute instead an arrangement whereby, as far as was possible, all three were more integrated, with the piano first among equals. To that end he hired as his bassist the incomparable and startlingly talented Scott LaFaro and the drummer Paul Motian. At first, LaFaro’s input was often disproportionate, so that inaugural gigs sometimes sounded like the Scott LaFaro Trio. There was work to be done. But it was soon completed, with different bassists and drummers after LaFaro’s untimely death fulfilling newly-fashioned, not to say revolutionary, roles.

Cardiff-based pianist Ross Hicks, a graduate of the glittering Jazz course at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff will be aware of these antecedents. Among piano alumni from either the RWCM&D or Cardiff University’s Music department, Hicks has declared his intent by self-recording an album, Three Elms, with a trio – Nick Kacal on bass and Alex Goodyear on drums – fashioned on post-Evans transformations.  Both Kacal and Goodyear have academic backgrounds, the former at the University of Salford and the latter, like Hicks, at the RCM&D.

The trio will play  charts from the  Ross New Album, Three Elms, interspersed with music that reflected or inspired them