Marking a sizeable shift in emphasis the Neil Cowley Trio return in force on their latest album The Face of Mount Molehill with strings, a new bass player and freshly crafted guitar textures and effects. Cowley talks to Selwyn Harris.

Neil Cowley is seated opposite me at a small table a floor above the Royal Festival Hall foyer ready to tuck into an early lunch of beef and mushroom stew. “I can see the word ‘improvisation’ on your sheet,” he says, just before taking his first slurp. You can detect a kind of mock apprehension in his tone; the 39-year old pianist/writer is more used to being questioned about the j-word but it’s only a short journey from there to the i-word.

His acoustic piano trio’s unique mix of hummable melodies, classical music, clubland high-lows and a visceral indie rock band-like spirit sprinkled with the pianist’s quirky suburban bloke-y humour has been a breath of fresh air ever since they appeared on a contemporary scene generally populated by earnest young, conservatory-educated types. But in general, improvisation is something that has been notable by its absence, at least on recording. And the new album The Face of Mount Molehill, their second for the Naim label released at the end of January, continues in that vein.

Cowley certainly doesn’t lack pedigree as a musician; he’s an ex-classical piano prodigy who performed Shostakovich at the age of 10 to a full house just next door in London’s QEH. But he’s also confessed to a fear of jazz, and of its ‘scene’, that points both to a lack of confidence and a kind of inferiority complex that says you don’t belong here; you won’t ever catch him depping or playing as a band sideman on a jazz gig (“for fun, behind closed doors,” he says.) Nevertheless, just over five years ago Cowley arrived in the ‘genre’ if you like, as the leader of one of the UK’s first post-EST piano trios. Having had some success with his chill-out electronic production duo Fragile State in the early noughties, Cowley became frustrated with the lack of band interaction and also, as he put it, at the difficulty of, “extracting emotion from a chip”.

This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #160 – to read the full article click here to subscribe and receive a FREE CD...