For a pianist whose prodigious recorded legacy goes back to the 1960s, Ran Blake has only rarely deviated from his preferred settings: solo albums and duos with vocalists. While his Short Life of Barbara Monk (1987) is arguably one of the finest quartet records of the 1980s, and his Sonic Temples (2001) is a superb later trio effort, he has for the most part been largely content to limit himself to more intimate contexts, especially with talented singers such as Jeanne Lee, Christine Correa and, more recently, Sara Serpa and Dominique Eade.
His first two records with Eade, Whirlpool (2011) and Town and Country (2017), offered compelling readings of the American songbook, both within and outside standard jazz…