Micah Thomas’ trio, working together since 2019, are creating a musical language where each member can provide balance and imbalance and work within a constantly shifting group texture. Drawing on the rich tradition of piano-bass-drums ensembles since the 20th century, the trio manipulates shapes, harmony, and rhythm in a rich tapestry on the platform of Micah’s compositions.

The young pianist Micah Thomas was revealed to an international audience in 2020 with the release of his trio album Tide, his first recording as a leader, and with Omega by saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins quartet, which Thomas has been a part of since 2017. It seemed that Thomas had no time to lose.

His release of his new opus, Reveal, confirms not only his exceptional instrumental talents but he also draws on the history of modern jazz to nourish his innovative and powerfully organic conceptions of the age-old “piano-bass-drums” formula. Thomas is already standing out in a new generation of American jazz musicians determined to conjugate the tradition in a subjective present.

It is precisely that open-minded attitude, and Thomas' ability to appreciate the entire heritage of modern jazz and create its synthesis in a language so continuously personal and inventive, that we can find in a condensed form today inside Reveal, the young pianist’s third album as a leader. Together with bassist Dean Torrey and drummer Kayvon Gordon, Thomas has picked up where his first record Tide left off, and he has done so with a blend of authority, naturalness and daring that is impressive for his age. Reveal is a sort of aesthetic manifesto that definitively lays down the bases for an “art of the trio” that is eminently singular and innovative.

Putting into practice an orchestral and decidedly collective conception of the trio formula founded on a generalized interactivity, the three musicians have here developed music that is at once astonishingly compact in its textures and in its polyrhythms – they fit precisely together in fluid gestures, as if this intense concentration of energies was generating inner spaces into which the clear, magnificently articulated, intelligently discontinuous song of the piano can dive with a sparkling virtuosity.

In this foundational record whose mastery of form is total, Thomas has allowed himself all kinds of daring without ever foundering into any kind of mannerism. He concludes his album – a form of apotheosis – with the hallucinatory, repetitive motifs of “Denardirn," a subtly experimental piece that truly opens up new horizons for us. (Pressetext)



"I am already tagging him as one who has a unique style as well as all the tools needed to make a major contribution to the world of jazz piano." - Fred Hersch