CD Review of Aaron Goldberg's Home

High proficiency cohabits with modest composure in the music of the pianist Aaron Goldberg. “Home,” his accomplished fourth album, is full of swirling currents and dizzying flourishes, but its basic temperament is reflective, inward-seeking. It’s a statement of confident serenity, and more of a focused experience than “Worlds,” Mr. Goldberg’s previous album, made with the same rhythm team of Reuben Rogers on bass and Eric Harland on drums.

Those musicians have been members of Mr. Goldberg’s working trio for well over a decade, and to hear them here is to recognize the benefit of that experience, which only continues to deepen. It’s worth noting that Mr. Rogers and Mr. Harland have also served side by side in other groups, including those led recently by the saxophonists Joshua Redman and Charles Lloyd. It’s also worth noting that “Home” was recorded a few years ago. (“Worlds,” released in 2006, was recorded in 2003.)

Mr. Goldberg’s bright fluency and pristine articulation are the guiding characteristics of the band, whether his sidemen are drifting peaceably beside him or agitating beneath. A canny arranger, he makes each piece discrete, though not without inviting parallels. The polyrhythmic exuberance in his version of “Isn’t She Lovely,” the Stevie Wonder song, recalls his fellow post-bop pianist Jacky Terrasson. (So too does his headlong romp through Thelonious Monk’s “I Mean You.”) Elsewhere his contrapuntal dexterity suggests a closer peer, Brad Mehldau, though never to the point of emulation.

His secret weapon on the album is the tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, who appears on just three tracks but makes such a definitive impact that his presence looms larger. On “Aze’s Blues,” a serpentine original, he plays Warne Marsh to Mr. Goldberg’s Lennie Tristano; on “Canción por la Unidad Latinoamericana,” by Pablo Milanés, he adopts the controlled lyricism of a folk singer, projecting softly in his altissimo range. And on “The Rules,” he takes part in a series of small but steady accretions, helping Mr. Goldberg and the others unfold a narrative, aflutter with heady suspense.

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