It’s not often Aristotle gets a walk-on part in these pages, but this album is a classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Sheppard has previously guested with Eriksen’s trio on 2018’s Perfectly Unhappy and 2022’s In the Mountains, and these albums, together with live performances put up on YouTube, were so well received that Sheppard now gets to share the billing on this CD.

This seems appropriate, as saxophone and trio neatly dovetail together in a way that very few – just two or three, saxophone and piano trio ensembles – in contemporary jazz today have succeeded in doing (an elite group that would include Charles Lloyd and Gerald Clayton plus bass and drums, and Joe Lovano and Marilyn Crispell plus bass and drums). Playing a set of seven Eriksen originals, Eriksen’s song writing ability often gets overlooked, but his compositions draw the listener into his music, his melodies finely tuned to stimulate those areas of the brain implicated in reward and emotion. Your pleasure senses are aroused and you come back again and again wanting more, all the while getting deeper into the music that is free from the superficial gloss of virtuosity without meaning, but replete with the subtlety and grace that aspires to something more profound. Sheppard, ever the careful listener, understands this music, his trajectory in perfect alignment with a trio that speaks with one voice.