Phronesis - Parallax review: exhilarating without ever descending to bombast

Anglo-Scandinavian piano trio Phronesis manage to thread the most difficult needle in music, reaching an audience outside the jazz ghetto without loosing the respect of their fellow musicians: their energetic, tightly wound sound is exhilarating without ever descending to bombast, complex but rarely obtuse, emotive but never facile.

Individually, drummer Anton Eger, pianist Ivo Neame and bassist and founder Jasper Høiby are gifted instrumentalists, but there is no empty display here, and in some ways the art of Phronesis lies in getting so much collective complexity from individual simplicity.

Their sixth album, recorded in the hallowed acoustics of Abbey Road, reveals a group that, 10 years on, is still growing and maturing, achieving the sort of deep rapport that other, more temporary groupings, can never replicate.