Harold Danko is one of those musicians whose international career has regularly brought him into sharp focus only for him to flit out of the frame again for a while. He did some excellent work with Chet Baker in the 1980s, and he had a 20-year association with Lee Konitz from the 1970s to the late 1990s, but he’s less well known as a leader in his own right, despite a long and consistent recording career. The current trio has existed for some time, but this album takes it as far away as it’s ever gone from its previous home in standard repertoire, into a hinterland in which Danko bases group improvisations on contrafacts of well-known standards with somewhat simplified harmonies, juxtaposed with some completely free playing. Sadly, the latter (including the title-track) is the least rewarding playing on the album, with none of the fire of free players like Cecil Taylor, and none of the truly virtuosic interplay that Jarrett managed when he took his Standards Trio into free territory with Always Let Me Go. Instead, we get skittering noodling, that goes nowhere for an interminable time. But the title-track is sandwiched between two examples of what this trio does best: gentle, lyrical interplay on vaguely familiar sequences. ‘Quiet Dawn’ and ‘Shallow Waters’ are both rewarding to listen to, and Anderson’s bass excursions (some of them directly quoting the source material of the ‘new’ compositions) are deftly prompted by Hirshfield’s percussion and Danko’s chording, while the pianist’s own singing right-hand lines have a clarity and purpose that’s missing from his freer playing. So maybe he’s on to something with these pared down songs as the basis for ‘chamber’ trio playing, as he puts it. But the truly free stuff is dated and nowhere near as rewarding.