The Giovanni Guidi Trio plays jazz of uncommon originality and reflective depth here on their second ECM album, This Is The Day. Italian pianist Guidi, US bassist Morgan, and Portuguese drummer Lobo continue the work begun on the 2011 recording City of Broken Dreams, with pensive, abstract ballads which shimmer with inner tension.

Recorded on April 19th-21st, 2014, This Is The Day sure the repertoire is mostly from Guidis pen, but this incredible album also includes the standard, Nat King Cole's 'I'm Through with Love,' (albeit in an admittedly ambitious exploration), and from Cuban songwriter Osvaldo Farrés, 'Quizas, Quizas, Quizas.'

The trio go free-form and out on a limb more on the Lobo tune ‘Baiiia,’ and that free-jazz thread resumes on the Bley-ish track ‘The Debate’. The aforementioned ‘Quizás, quizás, quizás’ is lighter, the fun bit such as it exists on a sometimes sombre album yet still somewhat reluctant, Lobo at his best.

The tenth track is a variation on the first tune. It’s instructive to listen to both together and out of sequence for some further insights as to how the material generates new ideas. One initial difference is the early bass intervention on the variation, this ‘Trilly’ theme of Guidi’s of Morricone quality.

The standards provide a certain relief in one main sense in that you are able to listen to the pianist’s own tunes with different ears in so doing understanding them better given what he does with the known. Guidi’s two cohorts, the American double bass-player Thomas Morgan and the Portuguese drummer Joao Lobo, help Guidi, the mystic surfer ride the waves of his own trills and harmonic phrasing.