For those unaware, the first time that bassist Jeff Denson and guitarist Romain Pilon got together to record with drummer Brian Blade felt like a lightning strike.

Like so many musicians before them, the longtime friends from their days as standout students at Berklee experienced what’s often been described as the Blade Factor, a sudden, clarifying jolt that illuminates the musical moment.

Captured in the studio on the 2019 Ridgeway Records album Between Two Worlds, the trio’s debut introduced an uncommon communion that seemed destined for further adventures.

Even two years of pandemic angst hasn’t been able to dim their brilliant chemistry. If anything, the trio’s second album, the just-released Finding Light, blazes all the more brightly as an antidote to isolation, anxiety, and despair.

Released on Denson’s Ridgeway Records label on September 23rd, 2022, the project beams with the palpable pleasure the musicians take in each other’s company as they explore new music together in glorious trialogue.

1. Daily Jubilee Of Dancing Herbie D.
2. Finding Light
3. This Way Cooky
4. A Moment In Time
5. Wishing Well
6. The Tipster
7. Terre Intro
8. Terre
9. Espoir
10. Sixto

This oh-so pure, magnificently cultured and jubilantly heartfelt new album opens on the rhythmically jaunty Daily Jubilee of Dancing Herbie D., one of the six originals composed by Denson, and backs that up with the organically dulcet Finding Light, then we get the first of the four Pilon tracks, the playfully perky, veined with some hard-edged funk This Way Cooky (which is actually an homage to his dog), and that is in turn backed by the ornate ambiance within A Moment in Time, and then we get the gentle dance floor swirl of Wishing Well brought forth.

Up next is one of my own personal favorites, Denson’s righteously blithe swing piece The Tipster and then we get the short, but sweet upright bass piece Terre Intro, which serves as the launch pad for the final three tracks.

All compositions by Pilon, the trio opens on the delicate, almost ethereal Terre (Earth), before moving seamlessly into veritably fluid, textually layered Espoir (Hope), rounding out on the free flowing, harmonically compositional styling found within the simply magnificent Sixto.

Denson spent the first 18 months of the pandemic keeping the California Jazz Conservatory running online as dean of instruction. Though two years had elapsed between the trio’s last tour and regrouping to record Finding Light, they picked up where they left off, exploring a sound that evolved because we did a lot of playing and traveling together in 2019 and 2020, Denson says. Each time we played together the band kept growing and our sound and direction evolved. Our connection kept intensifying.

That intensity is evident throughout Finding Light. The trio’s new music reflects both the unbridled joy of gathering together again and the small pleasures (particularly the fur-bearing variety) that eased the surreal passage of pandemic time.

Finding Light - Jeff Denson, Romain Pilon & Brian Blade (Official Music Video)

Daily Jubilee of Dancing Herbie D. - Jeff Denson, Romain Pilon & Brian Blade (Official Music Video)

This Way Cooky - Jeff Denson, Romain Pilon & Brian Blade (Official Music Video)

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www.jeffdenson.com

Jeff Denson @ Twitter