Troy Collins reviews pianist/composer Myra Melford’s latest release, The Whole Tree Gone (Firehouse 12 Records), in the newly posted February issue of the online publication, Point of Departure.  The record, Ms. Melford’s second with her longstanding group, Be Bread, features Cuong Vu (trumpet), Ben Goldberg (clarinets), Brandon Ross (acoustic guitars), Stomu Takeishi (acoustic bass guitar) and Matt Wilson (drums).

“Like her mentor, Henry Threadgill,” Collins writes, “Melford has a talent for effortlessly interweaving seemingly incongruous elements into cohesive multi-layered compositions, yielding a singular aesthetic that blurs the line between the written and improvised. As lyrical, adventurous and conceptually expansive as the work of contemporaries like Tim Berne, Dave Douglas and Marty Ehrlich, Melford’s compositions are among the most compelling of her generation. Featuring finely tuned arrangements and buoyed by her sympathetic peers, The Whole Tree Gone is a high water mark in Melford’s extraordinary oeuvre.”