The thing about clichés is that they often start with what was once a good line, an apt description which through overuse eventually is, or should be, stripped from the language. Which is a shame, because sometimes a writer wants to be able to say something like “contains the entire tradition of jazz in his keyboard,” but can’t. Ain’t good writin’.

Bobby Few powerfully and pristinely plays, wraps and overlays the history of jazz without codification or cliché so a small debt of less-than-hackneyed writing is owed him. But what he demonstrates on Transcontinental Jazz Express is pure jazz, in all its energy, introspection and exuberance. It is fast, strong and slick. It’s clever and familiar. It’s good piano playing.

The Cleveland-born Few recorded with Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp, and has performed with Sunny Murray, Steve Lacy, Alan Silva and Noah Howard, among others. But this recording, a live solo set from the 2000 Vision Festival, is not strictly speaking an avant outing. Like Dave Burrell, (another Shepp alum) Few is able to stay within the tradition while referencing outside streams and creating something new in the process. He plays hard and all over the keyboard, dropping barrelhouse basslines, gliding arpeggio and Ellingtonian Jumps for Joy phrases. It’s the kind of thing that, in the 21st Century, you’d better do damn well if you’re going to do at all.

The extended suite covers a lot of ground, musically and also figuratively by way of the structure. The framework, a train ride through Africa and Asia, is pretty incidental to the music, which is for the better. The African leg of the journey is reminiscent of similar Randy Weston projects, and Few even announces the stops in short, simple verses. Pan Africanism is something of a throwback in jazz, as are trains for that matter, but the devices only punctuate the performance, stopping short of defining it.

Bobby Few discographie: