By Tim Marchman

During his Ivey-Divey Trio’s performance Monday night at Merkin Hall, Don Byron took some time to explain the idea behind the group to the audience. Inspired by a classic Lester Young/Nat Cole/Buddy Rich session, Byron wanted to put together a group that represented, as that group did, “the optimum musicianship, the most advanced musicianship.”

This is a mark that’s impossible to hit, but this group comes closer at its best than a skeptic would think. Byron is arguably the most important hornman alive, Jason Moran perhaps the most accomplished and yet promising young pianist around, and while neither of the trio’s veteran drummers, Jack DeJohnette (who played on the Ivey-Divey album) and Billy Hart (who played Monday) mean anything like what Rich did, both are very fine. Monday didn’t see the group in anything like its best form, but there was still more for the mind and the ear than would be found at a dozen solid shows around town. These are—Byron especially—important enough musicians to be more interesting on something of an off night than many well-regarded ones are at their best.

The problem—for at least part of the set, anyway—was tied up with the reasons why the group is, at its best, so good. Byron and Moran are great musicians of simultaneity, mournful and wistful and excited by the possibilities of life all at once. When things aren’t clicking, as they weren’t during the first two numbers they played, the music turns grey and blurry, and seems confused, rather than complex. Perhaps it was because they played too many a capella solos in sequence, or because of an over reliance on abrupt stops that impeded some of what they were trying to do rhythmically. In any event, it didn’t quite work.

Things picked up quite well from there. Moran is a wonderfully explosive soloist, which makes him a perfect complement to Byron, who has an enormous range on the clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor saxophone, but also has a tendency to sit in one register chasing the ideal phrase, or at least the ideal note. More to the point, both men have assimilated the tradition deeply enough that when they work within it, they can’t help but make music that sounds like and speaks to the life going on in and just outside of the performance hall. It’s the difference between someone who knows the teachings and someone who knows them well enough to have internalized them.

This group gets enough credit, but they deserve more.