MILAN VERBIST TRIO

TIME CHANGE

Origin Records

Milan Verbist, piano; Toon Rumen, double bass; Jens Meijer, drums.

This lovely album opens with a rubato piano introduction to the title tune.  There is a tenderness to the touch of Milan Verbist on the piano keys.  The title song is soothing to the ear and to the heart.  It’s an original composition by Verbist, reflecting a period of time around the transition from winter to summer.  It also pinpoints when this album was recorded. After a while, Toon Rumen enters with an improvised double bass solo, while Jens Meijer whisks his drum brushes softly against the skins, holding the arrangement in place.

Verbist is quite the composer, offering five original songs for this project.  “No, I Haven’t” is a catchy title and melody, based on a popular jazz standard.  It swings!

“’No, I Haven’t’ is a composition based on the harmony of “Have You Met Miss Jones” which I wrote in the summer of 2024.  It came to me in a playful moment while improvising over the chords,” the pianist explained.

A song titled, “Happy House” is another joyful tune played at a medium swing tempo with Rumen’s bass walking briskly and Jens Meijer strong on drums.  Milan Verbist flutters and trembles his fingers across the keys in a wild and wonderful way.

Verbist is a Belgian pianist and son of esteemed bassist Piet Verbist.  He includes the music of Bach (a tune called Sarabande), and compositions by Gary Peacock, Tomasz Stanko, and Ornette Coleman on this album.  I can hear his deep classical influences as Verbist plays and improvises.

“The process of writing a piece usually takes weeks, months or even longer.  “Djeezes” is an exception.  It was finished in less than two hours, right before I had to leave, and I almost missed a train because of it. It’s based around the G7 sus chord. (The title) which sounds like Jesus when pronounced in English, is not meant in a religious sense,” Verbist writes in his liner notes.

“Djeezes” is an up tempo, straight-ahead piece of music that quickly becomes one of my favorites on this album.

Milan Verbist pushes the boundaries of his own creativity during his arrangement of Gary Peacock’s “Flutter Step” tune.  It was originally written in 4/4, but the Verbist trio performs it in 15/8.

This album will become available to the public on September 19, 2025.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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