The Guardian - rated 5/5

Title
John Taylor: Angel of the Presence

Author
John Fordham

Three years ago, the Manchester-born pianist John Taylor was turning heads in a trio with former Bill Evans bassist Marc Johnson and the great American drummer Joey Baron. Now Swedish bassist Palle Danielsson and British drummer Martin France are his partners on this sublime set, launched on an imminent UK tour. Taylor's proximity to the status of the Jarretts and Mehldaus, not to mention his late hero Bill Evans, has been a long time coming. Though some predicted it decades ago, the broadening of the pianist's vision and the further blossoming of his awesome technique has been a genuine middle-years breakthrough rather than simply a late reminder of overlooked mastery. Taylor is more classical and impressionistic, less gregariously hook-oriented than Esbjorn Svensson or Tord Gustafsen, doesn't convolute pop tunes like Brad Mehldau, reawaken standards like Keith Jarrett, or play with Herbie Hancock's swollen-river imperiousness. But he rebalances elements of all those qualities.
Steve Swallow's busy Up Too Late has Taylor improvising in an episodic series of surging runs, all different, some starting very low and exploding into clustered treble rattles, some hinting at regular swing licks, some featuring two-handed dialogues like a piano duet. Martin France's snare tattoos, shimmery cymbal sounds and segues between waltzes and disguised funk, and Danielsson's fluency and big sound sharpen Taylor's reflectiveness in his own slow pieces, and Steve Swallow's Vaguely Asian is another masterly example of entwined but distinct melody lines in full flight. Two Kenny Wheeler tunes explore the pianist's love of oblique resolutions that nonetheless sustain a song-shape. This may even be a better Taylor trio than the Baron/Johnson one, and that's saying something.