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It's been a decade since Trio X—reedman and cornetist Joe McPhee, drummer Jay Rosen and bassist Dominic Duval—released their debut, Watermelon Suite (CIMP, 1999). Though all three members of the trio are among the busiest improvising composers on the planet, that fact does nothing to diminish the empathy on which each Trio X recording is based. Their 2006 US tour was recently documented in a lavish seven-disc boxed set on CIMPoL. In March of that year, they toured Eastern Europe and in addition to a DVD documentary on CIMP, The Train and the River (2007), their concert in Vilnius, Lithuania at Konresu Rumai now gets the double-LP treatment from Lithuania's No Business Records. Live in Vilnius features McPhee mostly on tenor, with a few brittle daubs of cornet for good measure, as the trio engages long-form renditions of standards, Monk and Ornette Coleman tunes, and compositions by members of the group. Trio X is far more than power trio push-and-pull; rather, they extend the Gnostic "Y" of Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity (ESP, 1964) into realms both historical and contemporary. On the closing "Blue Monk," McPhee purrs velvety and slick through the theme with touches of Coleman Hawkins and Gene Ammons, with Duval and Rosen providing a light and easy lope. Yet that Monkishness grows from a shattered display of metallic, split-tone peals and vocalizing through the horn, an eruption into muscular blowing over dry, snare-crack pulse. Husky, pathos-laden tenor fuels "Valentines in
