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SAM YAHEL
”Hometown”
(Posi-Tone)

Sam Yahel has been playing jazz in New York since the early 1990s, almost always as a Hammond organist. (He was a fixture in the early days of Smalls, on West 10th Street, along with the pianist Brad Mehldau and the guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel; these days he leads his own trio.) But he hasn’t hid behind the bullying power of the Hammond, its ability to give you shivers with shifting drawbars or a loud crescendo: he has put himself in places where pianists go, playing volatile music with curiosity and hunger in his improvising.

”Hometown” is, surprisingly, his first album as a pianist. It was recorded in 2007; I guess there’s still no rush to get the word out that he’s very good. A piano-trio record made in the studio with the bassist Matt Penman and drummer Jochen Rückert, it’s casual enough to have been a gig, well-produced enough to represent a musician for a long time and strong enough in arrangement, soloing and interaction that it doesn’t lose your interest. That shouldn’t be rare, but it is.

There’s a tensile power in all of Mr. Yahel’s solos here, a drifting and warping of tempo through long lines held together with baroque logic, blues feeling and a lack of cliché. (He knows how to use swing and dynamics too but doesn’t show off; part of this record’s charm is its good sense.) Go straight to his aggressive version of Thelonious Monk’s ”Think of One” for the prime example, but that power is here even in the slower songs, including an industrious version of ”Moonlight in Vermont.”

The sound of this piano trio has a few things in common with Mr. Mehldau’s: the experimental stubbornness of the phrasing; the dry, clean and clever arrangements; and the abiding interest in making use of pop music. John Lennon’s ”Jealous Guy” and Duke Ellington’s ”Blue Pepper” are both here, authoritative with backbeats; so is Bebel Gilberto’s electronic bossa-nova ”River Song,” skimming and skittering on drums and bass. But Mr. Yahel is also substantially different from Mr. Mehldau. Mr. Yahel’s aims are smaller and more streamlined, and this is a smart, satisfying, low-to-the ground record. BEN RATLIFF