Now 73 years old, the Berlin-based Japanese pianist Aki Takase, has lost none of her restlessly creative zeal and unique contemporary-sounding cross-idiomatic approach. The duo/trio seems to be her ideal setting as it emphasizes a close dialogue above everything else and she's worked extensively one-to-one with everyone from her husband - leading German free jazz pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach – to Rudi Mahall and Han Bennink as well as David Murray and Ingrid Laubrock. But that kind of intimate communication between musicians is also apparent from her new piano trio Auge, more accurately described as a piano-bass-drums collective. Unusually perhaps, Takase's work in the contemporary avant-jazz field has been far more outgoing than introspective and her various tribute recordings from Fats Waller and Duke Ellington through to Eric Dolphy indicate as much. Her compositions draw inspiration from gospel-jazz and such progressive modernist pianist-composers as Thelonious Monk, Paul Bley and Cecil Taylor through to both old and new-‘classical' music. But the voice behind them is always unmistakably hers balanced between kinetic dance-like rhythms and an enigmatic impressionism with the element of surprise lurking each step of the way. Her trio partners are Swiss bassist Christian Weber and German percussionist Michael Griener. Experienced performers on the Euro free improv scene, their close-knit interplay with Takase is real edge-of-the-seat stuff.