When pianist Crispell and bassist Peacock collaborated with the late drummer Paul Motian on two ECM sessions around the millennium, the New York Times called them "two of the most beautiful piano-trio records in recent memory". Even without Motian, the evidence for that judgment is plain in these tracks. Crispell was an unruly free-jazz keyboard cyclone for years, but now combines that command in dizzyingly open situations with delicacy and patience; Peacock, a deep-rooted standard-songs player (he remains a cornerstone of Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio), has a voluminous vocabulary that doesn't desert him at the point when song structures dissolve (they're both meditating Buddhists, which maybe helps). Peacock (sounding more precise than on recent Jarrett recordings) sprints and crash-stops with Crispell's blurted melody on Patterns, ushers her around slow bends on the lilting Goodbye, and helps her devise what could be a ballet accompaniment on the all-improv Leapfrog. The Lea is glowingly folk-song-like, while Blue often walks like regular jazz, and the gentle yet intense title track sets throbbing piano chords against a nimble bass melody. "You have to have an open mind – even no mind, a clear mind" to play this way, Peacock the Buddhist says, and you can hear what he means all through Azure.