Kate Wyatt Trio, Murmurations

Jazz can span a wide spectrum, from “painfully bland background music” on one hand to “a bunch of (mostly) men furiously soloing over each other” on the other. On her new album Murmurations, Kate Wyatt finds a sweet spot—musically interesting, but still pleasant to the ear. You can find the Montreal pianist doing classic jazz at clubs like Upstairs, or further-out experiments at less traditional spots. Her new album is a showcase for that musical multiplicity. The album opens with a version of “Mack the Knife,” but the crusty chestnut is almost unrecognizable, with Wyatt only deploying the familiar melody after the six-minute mark. The phrases Wyatt conjures up on “Sunrise,” as elegant as they are idiosyncratic, evoke traditional jazz while branching out in harmonically dense directions. This is her show, but bassist Adrian Vedady and drummer Louis-Vincent Hamel offer able support, and on the ...