"Zyft - Henk Zwerver (acoustic guitar), Ziv Taubenfeld (bass clarinet) & Maya Felixbrodt (viola) - returns as well with Triangle Moments, just recorded in Amsterdam in June. The result is a more assertive & intricate trio interaction than for their first album, Midnight Tea Suite (favored here in April 2019, part of a rambling survey of Zwerver on Creative Sources...). Given the instrumentation then, there's a clear parallel to Hunt at the Brook Again & its review here earlier this month. One might even suggest some evocations of nostalgia in each case, more for the first album from the latter trio, and then Zyft's first outing still evoked more of a hint of rock/genre.

So the "Zyft" name also suggests something unimportant, and it'd be difficult to assert that the trio really reaches for expression beyond itself (or beyond the everyday), but the forging of an egalitarian three-way interaction remains worthwhile in itself (as is the everyday...). Indeed Triangle Moments builds to a more unusual texture by the end, incorporating more extended technique, so there's still a sense of exploration.... (Although Zwerver has been relatively quiet since that prior batch of recordings, Taubenfeld has continued to raise his profile, e.g. with a Clean Feed leader album, while Felixbrodt is still someone I've heard only with this unit.... And viola does again bring some of the most intense & distinctive interjections here.)

So there's some intensity at times, including to start, but generally more of a three-way conversation, perhaps one musician briefly taking the lead, soon back to a very collective feel & to composite (& contrapuntal, often pointillist around guitar) activity: The conversational style can quickly put the listening mind abuzz, but also opens up with time for more space to think. The compact Triangle Moments thus seems to invite a sort of local, yet far-ranging, "political" debate."-Todd McComb, Jazz Thoughts