Review: ‘Trio of Bloom’ with Nels Cline, Craig Taborn, and Marcus Gilmore

Trio of Bloom (Pyroclastic, 2025) is the first meeting of three titans of creative music, artists to whom genres and boundaries hold little meaning. You can regularly find each of them in conventional or edgy sessions, or within the turf that lies between. The term in the promotional notes is a better one – genre hybridizers. They are pianist Craig Taborn, guitarist Nels Cline, and drummer Marcus Gilmore, forming the rare piano-guitar-drums trio. The catalyst for this meeting is producer and poet David Breskin, a longtime collaborator with all three, and by all accounts, the go-to producer for projects on the Pyroclastic label. He thrives on putting together people who might admire each other from afar but have never played together. Taborn and Gilmore have worked together in bands led by Chris Potter and Jakob Bro, but had never creatively interacted with each other’s compositions. Cline had never played with either artist.

Four decades ago, Breskin produced the sole studio album by Power Tools, a unique trio of guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Melvin Gibbs, and drummer Ronald Jackson. That record, Strange Meeting (Antilles New Directions, 1987), had a lasting impact, especially on Taborn and Cline, the latter of whom has commented that “the category-less, open and rocking precedent of that music was a very freeing inspiration.”  For this session, Breskin requested each bandmate bring a selection of original compositions, both new and repurposed, as well as a cover song that might work in this context. What results are three covers, four Cline originals, two Taborn originals, a Gilmore original, and a lengthy collective creation by all three. As you’d expect, Taborn plays a wide array of keyboards, but Cline is also versatile, playing six-string and  twelve-string guitars, lap steel, and bass on two tracks. Gilmore has also found a few ways to embellish his drum kit. “Bloom” is as good a one-word description of the resulting sound as any. Effervescent, vibrant, and atmospheric are a few others that suit the album’s seventy minutes of sound.

Turning attention first to the covers, Gilmore is a whirlwind on the kit as he transforms the jazz-rock Texas shuffle of “Nightwhistlers,” a Taborn selection. A song originally from Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society’s Eye on You (About Time, 1980), the keyboardist and Cline do more than justice to its jazz-rock origins with searing lines and dizzying effects. Cline selected Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal’s “Bent It” from his What Comes After (ECM, 1973). The piece is a prime example of Cline’s renowned pedal and electronic board work, taking the dreamy spaciousness for which ECM Records is known and moving it into even more mysterious territory, with Taborn a more than willing accomplice.  Gilmore selected “Diana” from Wayne Shorter and Milton Nascimento’s Native Dancer (Columbia, 1975). The trio’s rendition is an ethereal, gorgeous rendering with Taborn on a crystalline celeste, Cline developing subtle loops, and Gilmore tuning his toms like a timpani for each chord change. The piece, along with Gilmore’s “Breath,” is a floating oasis of sublime beauty.

Taborn’s original “Unreal Light” is one of the best compositions in the album.  Like a slowly emerging sunrise, the gradual energy that comes with active daylight emerges through his keyboard work as Gilmore inventively uses the elements of his kit, and Cline sets off short bursts. By contrast, Taborn’s “Why Canada” provides a sharp, obtuse funk.  

Two of Cline’s compositions come from his Breskin-produced Nels Cline Singers album, Initiate (Cryptogramophone, 2010). On the first of these, “Queen King,” the guitarist overdubs on bass to further accentuate Afrobeat riffs helmed by Gilmore. During an interview at 2025’s Big Ears, Cline described himself as “not a jazz guitarist, but a ‘noise’ guitarist.” The second tune from Initiate, “Forge,” epitomizes this as Cline enables the trio to imbibe in the vintage sounds of King Crimson and the Mahavishnu Orchestra in a far more into-the-ether track. Cline also contributes two new pieces, “Eye Shadow Eye” and “Gone Bust.” The former unfolds in three sections, beginning with gorgeous ballad acoustic piano from Taborn and sensitive brushwork from Gilmore. The composer chimes in on acoustic guitar before launching an off-kilter electric blues solo that extends to an emphatic finale from the trio. The latter is a brief, rockish, disorienting sketch that closes the album.

The album’s centerpiece is “Bloomers,” a ten-minute free improvisation that captures the experimental electronic tendencies of Taborn and Cline, married with Gilmore’s uncanny sense of shifting rhythms on an unpredictable journey where the listener can easily and joyfully “get lost.” The imagination of this trio is limitless throughout this project, one of the year’s most exciting albums in creative music.

‘Trio of Bloom’ will be out on September 26, 2026 on Pyroclastic Records. You can purchase it on Bandcamp

Photo credit: Frank Heath