With ‘Full Circle’ Joe returns to the piano trio, a format that has been a long and abiding musical love. As a younger musician, Joe’s trio with James McLean (drums) and Marty Holoubek (double bass) was a sandbox for testing unique and challenging compositions that culminated in his albums Praxis (2015) and Confrontations (2018), the latter with trumpet virtuoso Scott Tinkler.

Before this group formed though, Joe’s first outings as a bandleader after moving to Melbourne in 2012 were with James McLean and Ben Robertson (double bass), performing some initial ‘Studies in Dissonant Counterpoint’ and compositions recorded in 1961 by Jimmy Giuffre’s visionary trio with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow.

In this special performance for the Melbourne Jazz Coop, Joe revives his formative collaboration with James and Ben with a new set of tunes that combine his trademark preference for multilayered intricacy with an embrace of the particular and the intimate. This music draws more deeply on Joe’s love of singing line and expressive gesture than his trio compositions of the 2010s, though the music is still held taught by a cerebral undercurrent that occasionally breaches the surface.