Glasgow Jazz Festival: Neil Cowley Trio | Mezcla

PUNDITS seem to have difficulty with the Neil Cowley Trio. His success as pianist of choice for the likes of Emile Sandé and Adele probably doesn’t help: is he, the beard-strokers ponder, pop-jazz, post-jazz or simply no-jazz? To be honest, Cowley’s formidable power piano trio are more good old-fashioned prog rockers than anything else, with some inevitable shades of the late Esbjörn Svensson Trio and enough jazz mischief to counter prog’s pomposity. There was a distinct Gothic tinge, too, to their thunderous set in this converted church, bathed in the roseate glow of stained glass windows and overhung by organ pipes.