Nicholas Payton, TRIUNE Review

by Icrom Bigrad

To listen to TRIUNE is to witness a convergence of three leaders, three lifelines of modern creative music, folding into one voice. Nicholas Payton has long been a provocateur in the truest sense of the word. Payton is one who stirs memory and possibility into the same vessel. By bringing together Esperanza Spalding and Karriem Riggins, he resurrects an idea that jazz is not a static form, but a constantly reshaping art that is in dialogue with genres, ancestry, and today’s musical sounds.

The title itself, TRIUNE, summons a theological resonance. Three-in-one is not only about instrumentation or leadership, but also about selfhood refracted through trumpet, bass, and drums, becoming trumpet-keyboard-vocal; bass-vocal; and drum-beatmaker. Each artist embodies multiplicity. Payton, simultaneously blowing horn and laying Rhodes chords, collapses the physical boundaries of performance. Spalding’s voice entwines with her bass lines as though her breath itself grows wood and string. Riggins, with his decades spanning Peterson swing and Dilla’s MPC, makes the kit a liminal space between church and block party.

The opening track, “Unconditional Love,” spans over eight minutes. The performance unfurls as a showpiece of the ritual of bass and drums circling in pulse while Payton shapes motifs into incantations. The music resists hurry, as though the trio insists that love, like groove, must be earned through patient listening.

“Feed the Fire” carries urgency as Riggins’ beat science infuses the trio with hip-hop’s angularity, while Spalding’s voice is an invocation of sensual warm tones. Payton plays trumpet lines that combine jazz and the benediction of the church. The piece contains fire and a sustained focus that jazz is a reflection of today’s culture and sounds.

On “Ultraviolet,” Nikki Glaspie adds her luminous voice. What results is an expression of music coming from a place of no boundaries. The resonance of her voice against Payton’s suite-structured composition ties groove to cosmic alignment. The group creates a porous border between intuition and design.

“Jazz Is a Four-Letter Word” nods directly to Abbey Lincoln’s insistence on language, history, and reclamation. Payton’s phrasing on the horn and Rhodes conversing in call-and-response is a unique voice he has developed over many years. Spalding shapes her basslines with steady exploration within the contemporary jazz groove, while Riggins turns funk jazz into a punctuation of hip hop nuances.

“Gold Dust Black Magic” is as evocative as its title. Payton’s clavinet and Rhodes shimmer like ancestral echoes. Spalding’s vocals enter not as adornment but as a spell. Riggins navigates polyrhythms that refuse easy categorization, mirroring the hybridity of the trio itself. Here, Jude Haven hears mythology: the dust of history transfigured into present incantation.

The closing “#bamisforthechildren” returns us to New Orleans, where lineage and community saturate every note. Ivan Neville and Erica Falls, with their Sly Stone-styled multi-lead layering, embody Payton’s insistence that this music is not an elite museum piece but a people’s expression. The track spills beyond trio form into collective ritual, a celebration of community as pedagogy. In the wake of Sly Stone’s passing, its timing feels less coincidental than cosmically ordained.

The album dazzles with the clarity of Esplanade Studios, the balance of Paul Stache’s production, the fidelity of Chris Allen’s mix. The brilliance lies in the sense that three titans were willing to listen, risk, and trust. TRIUNE is a musical reflection on what jazz music has always been, unconditional love, fire fed, words reclaimed, dust transfigured, children embraced. For those of us who listen deeply, it offers  a blueprint and a challenge to join the conversation.