Drew Gress has been a leading go-to bassist sideman over the past two decades in New York experimental jazz circles, but he hasn't had the kind of recognition for his own albums that he arguably deserves. It could be the quiet way he goes about his business or the lack of a ‘big concept’ with which to hang his work on. But it's certainly not due to a lack of quality or invention as this new recording The Sky Inside demonstrates. Initially mentored by pianist Marc Copland and bassist Gary Peacock, Gress has played an important role in the bands of cutting edge figures, among the most prominent being Tim Berne, Fred Hersch, Ellery Eskelin, Dave Douglas and lately John Hollenbeck's The Claudia Quintet.

His new recording has a line up that resembles a Tim Berne group with Tom Rainey, a longtime ‘rhythm’ partner of Gress and who with Berne made up the mid-nineties trio Paraphrase. The brilliantly pungent trumpeter Ralph Alessi and enigmatic pianist Craig Taborn have a fierce individualism and unpredictability as well as a remarkable resourcefulness. Not least on this challenging set, where the bassist's tartly majestic themes provide the framework for the band to probe at the boundaries between a kind of harmonically progressive post-bop, free jazz and a twentieth century classical impressionism, in places evoking the spirit of the late Andrew Hill. Gress is fluid yet sturdy and lyrical, whether shifting the harmonic or rhythmic impetus of a piece, or simply biting down hard on a groove. It's contemporary New York avant jazz played at the highest level.