http://www.nytimes.com
BY NATE CHINEN

ORRIN EVANS
“Faith in Action”
(Posi-Tone)

When the jazz pianist Orrin Evans leads a band, there’s usually a moment in the middle of a tune when it goes off the rails and into the dirt, and things get interesting. Maybe the drummer breaks away from the song’s governing rhythm and does something on the toms; the bassist starts playing agitated repetitions; and Mr. Evans commences some percussive banging or a little sly, perverse repetition or an improvised idea extended beyond the breaking point. He finds a node of tension and makes something bloom from it.

Over the last decade, bouncing between Philadelphia and New York, giving energy to both cities’ jazz scenes, Mr. Evans has poured out music. He has played in a few collective groups and released a lot of work on various labels: Criss Cross, Palmetto and his own, Imani. (The latest from Imani is a DVD called “Live All Over the Place,” with a handful of bands and 17 musicians.) In his shows and records Mr. Evans likes to encourage the feeling of extended family.

But what’s good for the jazz scene isn’t always good for records, and some of his have seemed distracted, a little blurry. “Faith in Action” is the corrective. For the most part it’s a trio album: Mr. Evans on piano, Luques Curtis on bass, Nasheet Waits on drums. (Rocky Bryant or Gene Jackson replace Mr. Waits for three tracks.) It’s partly a valentine to the saxophonist and bandleader Bobby Watson, one of the musicians who defined the sound of New York’s straight-ahead jazz in the 1980s and one of Mr. Evans’s early mentors; Mr. Watson’s tunes make up half the record.