The trio's last release, 2012's Fred Hersch Trio - Alive at the Vanguard (Palmetto) was a critically hailed double album that earned the Grand Prix du Disque, France's top jazz award. With five years and numerous national and international tours under their belts, the group has continued to hone its rarified communion, a creative frission evident on Floating. Unfolding with much the same rhapsodic coherence of a trio concert, the new album ranks amongst Hersch's very best work, which is to say that it's one of the era's definitive trio recordings.
While the album focuses on Hersch's original compositions, two American Songbook standards serve as lyrical touchstones. Propelled by McPherson's clattering sticks, the trio opens the session with an intricately patterned sojourn through 'You and the Night and the Music' that builds to a two-handed montuno. The trio closes with a sensuous caress of 'If Ever I Would Leave You' and a measured but exacting investigation of 'Let's Cool One,' continuing Hersch s longstanding tradition of closing most performances with a Monk masterpiece.