At 72 Ahmad Jamal would be well within his rights to settle for elder-statesman decorousness, but for attack and jangling energy his new trio disc In Search Of yields nothing to the work of his contemporary Cecil Taylor. Jamal charms and provokes by turns: the push-pull dynamics are fiercely but almost whimsically varied, a string of unannounced takeoffs and forced landings. His right-hand passages are sunny, sometimes filigree in delicacy, and wander all over the piano, but inevitably they are swallowed up by chords that set the keyboard resonating: hammy chords, tough-nut chords, blunt-instrument chords; chords so bright they sting the ear, chords of squid-ink blackness; hard jolts, thunks, miasma and pedaled thunder, roars and sheer noise. On the ballad "I've Never Been in Love Before" his arabesques and decorative runs perpetually spin off into their own orbit, barely acknowledging the gravitational pull of the tune or the chords; at other moments, things become so dreamy that it's as if the music blurs for a moment, slipping out-of-focus. On readings of "Where Are You" and Monty Alexander's "You Can See" Jamal darts blissfully in, out and around the tune and the relaxed tempo, touching base only as he pleases. There are some extraordinary moments of brinksmanship: check out the burst of Taylorish chopsticks-fingered piano on "You Can See" or the bull-in-chinashop episode near the end of the same piece.

Listeners who like their piano trios decorous and their jam spread evenly may find the pianist's peaks-and-troughs delivery not to their taste. And sure, it's mannerism - pitched somewhere halfway between Erroll Garner and Randy Weston - but I found myself hooked after a few spins. His band, incidentally (James Cammack on bass and the great Idris Muhammad on drums), grooves mightily. Jamal's own compositions are uniformly excellent, and there's a guest appearance by a singer (the late O. C. Smith of "Little Green Apples" fame) which is actually one of the best tracks on the album rather than a distraction. Great stuff all round.