Mel Bay Records' MB3 jazz guitar trio celebrated the release of its first CD January 3 at New York's famous Iridium Jazz Club in Times Square, playing to a full house of rapt jazz fans- no small feat for a Wednesday night after New Year's. The group consists of three elite jazz guitarists Vic Juris, Corey Christiansen and Mordy Ferber (filling in for Jimmy Bruno), backed by bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Tim Horner (filling in for Danny Gottlieb). The Mel Bay 3 showed off their chops in two evening sets featuring the uniquely reinvented classics from their eponymous album, which has reached the #1 spot on the JazzWeek chart of national radio play of new jazz releases.

The group seized the audience's attention straight off the top with an impeccable, floating and intense rendition of Milestones by Miles Davis, with Christiansen playing lightening-fast scat style and Horner's syncopated drumming giving chase. Juris joined in on his Tom Doyle guitar with a separate voicing and Ferber used a pedal board with his well-worn, dark-brown sunburst '59 Strat sounding like a coffee pot perking along a smooth brew of melody. Jimmy Bruno's arrangement of this piece on the album is fast-paced with scatty runs and a noodley melody set afire by Jay Anderson's bass and Gottlieb's tapping percussion.

Christiansen's original piece Roads, (not on the MB3 album) is a tuneful piece with an intro which has the feel of an oldtime jazz ballad with Juris adding texture as the piece veered into a full-out smooth harmonic interplay meshed with percussive cymbal patter reminiscent of beating wings. This particular piece can be heard on Christiansen's album Awakenings, also on the Mel Bay Records label.

Israeli-born Ferber, who teaches jazz guitar at New York University and writes music for well-known television programs like HBO's The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, took on the intro to the MB3's rendition of the Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein classic, Softly As In a Morning Sunrise with his Strat padded with a cushion and electrical tape on the back to avoid scratches.

Ferber turned a front-row heckler from Massachusetts into an avowed fan with his spacey inventive approach with a modeler, harmonics, delay, and bass-string scratches all creating an otherworldly sound, which included wiping and hitting the sides of the guitar and strings at the neck for a comical guitarist's version of a pianist sitting on the keyboard á la Jerry Lee Lewis. With a walking bass line, Ferber's playing veered into a melodious jazz-blues line which he played with a champ guitar face. Christiansen's arrangement on the album turns a 1928 song with tango rhythms into a thoroughly updated piece turned pensive, creating an altogether new animal from a classic.

Vic Juris lead next on his arrangement of On Green Dolphin Street. Juris, who teaches the jazz programs at both the New School and at Rutgers, played a smoothly contemplative (compared to the Bill Evans version), mellow rendition of the piece, pitching his body into each note as he bounced up on the toes of his burnished black shoes and swung and dipped the guitar neck with ease. Ferber joined in on his clear-voiced nylon-string Godin guitar and contributed a bit of improvised scat singing.

The last piece of the set, Benny Golson's Killer Joe--also featured on the album--had Ferber soloing in the intro with a modeler via pedals which conveyed a spacey funk as Christiansen played nimbly clean lines with Anderson's bass and Horner's percussion providing backbone to Juris' arrangement, which spiced up the rhythm with a blues shuffle feel.

What was clear from the evening is that each player has his own distinct voice and style while the group works dynamically together as a whole; of course, this is what the best musicians anywhere strive to achieve. With the MB3, it's all in their back pockets and it's obvious that, along with the audience, each guitarist is enjoying the moment with every tune.

The MB3 CD features guitarist and Mel Bay Records recording artist Jimmy Bruno, who was 19 years old when he joined the Buddy Rich band. Vic Juris and Corey Christiansen complete the original guitar trio, joined by versatile drummer Danny Gottlieb (Pat Metheny Group) and bassist Jay Anderson, who has performed with Frank Zappa and Tom Waits among others. The album was recorded last May at Anderson's studio in New Paltz, New York.

Pieces not performed this evening which can be found on the CD include Miles Davis' Solar, arranged by Corey Christiansen. Christiansen, a senior editor and prolific author at Mel Bay Publications, gives the piece a bit more of an introduction while translating the horn part to guitar at a much more relaxed pace than the original from Davis' 1954 Walkin' album. Davis' All Blues, is also given a great blues slide intro on a National Resophonic. Christiansen's clever arrangement of Herbie Hancock's Cantaloupe Island plays on guitar with a bit more sass and sprightliness than the hot languor of the original piano version as Bruno and Juris harmonize trumpeter Freddie Hubbard's melody in fourths.

Bruno's arrangement of John Coltrane's Impressions is also on the album along with Eddie Harris' jaunty, angular and percussion-backed Freedom Dance Jazz. Juris has also created an eloquent and expressive rendering of the soulful Horace Silver ballad, Peace. Anderson and Gottlieb's work on this album offers both subtle shimmer and first-class rhythmic definition.

Jazz lovers will undoubtedly appreciate the MB3's thoughtful re-workings of these jazz standards, not to mention the ensemble musicianship which conveys the full splendor of each player's personality and style. Catch them if you can!

Editor's Note: The MB3 (with Mordy Ferber again filling in for Jimmy Bruno) with Danny Gottlieb and Jay Anderson in their West Coast CD release party was held at the Sheraton Park Hotel Ballroom at the Anaheim Resort on Harbor Blvd. in Anaheim California on Friday, January 19, 2007. The event featured John and Jeanne Pisano with Anthony Wilson.