East is West in new album from a Boston-based jazz trio

Almost 15 years ago, Panamanian American pianist and composer Danilo Perez founded the Berklee Global Jazz Institute at the Berklee College of Music on the principle that jazz has no borders. Since 2010, the institute has fostered connections among virtuoso musicians and provided a fertile ground for cultivating new artists and new ways of mixing traditions.

The latest brilliant product of the school is the Boston-based Ize Trio, featuring American pianist Chase Morrin, Cyprus-born percussionist George Lernis and Palestinian cellist Naseem Alatrash. Their debut album, The Global Suites, is out now, and they’re performing the music at the Berklee College of Music. Morrin joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to talk about the group’s origins and what they’re conveying with their album. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.

Arun Rath: Let’s first talk about the ethos of the Ize Trio. The “Ize” comes from four words, right?

Chase Morrin: Yeah, it’s spelled I, Z E, as in to humanize, empathize, improvise. We thought it was a cool way to symbolize the idea of taking something and making it into a real action.

Rath: Do you remember — I’m sure you do — the first time the three of you were playing together and you really kind of felt a groove? Like you got something?

Morrin: Yeah, This was just before the pandemic. We had been talking about playing for a while. We all knew each other very well, we were good friends. And we thought, “This would be a really cool idea to get together as a trio.” Because initially, the idea was it could almost be like a jazz piano trio, where the cello is kind of serving the role of the bass and percussion serving the role of the drums, but also could be almost like a classical chamber trio as well. And in which you’d have sort of violin, cello and piano.

And Naseem can play the melodies and I can play accompaniment. And then, of course, bringing all of our cultures to the table. We got together and we realized, “Wow, there’s a lot of potential here. There’s a lot of amazing sounds — and a lot of room for growth, where we can teach each other and inspire each other.”

Rath: There are four suites on this record, The Global Suites. I’d like to talk about the last one, it’s called Elemeno. And it also just so well reflects everything we’re talking about. It’s about education and biculturality.

Morrin: I remember us first working on this piece. And, we are all educators.

Originally I was very touched by an experience I had when I was in high school with legendary bassist John Clayton. And when I was young, like 14, 15 years old, I met him at a music program and he said, “It’s your duty and responsibility to teach.”

And I was very taken aback because I’m a little kid trying to learn from him. I’m expecting him to talk about music, but suddenly he’s telling me I’m supposed to teach. And this was kind of confusing, and I was very surprised.

And what he explained to us, he said, “Listen, my mentor was Ray Brown. He taught me a lot of things. And today, I’m your teacher. I’m going to be passing along knowledge to you. And tomorrow, you’re going to be the ones to pass on knowledge. And that’s part of the tradition. That’s part of the path of a musician.”

So, that left a big mark on me. And I think we all, in our own ways, take that into mind as educators. So we try to be active about that as much as possible.

Rath: We were just talking about one of the suites on the album. It’s called Elemeno and it starts off with your percussionist in the trio, George Lernis, playing something really amazing. Describe what we’re hearing.

Morrin: Yes. So we had the idea — I sat down with George, and we wanted to make this crazy percussion intro that brings that childlike spirit to the music, having fun, playing on all the different instruments, all the different toys.

George has a huge basement full of percussion from all around the world, so he wanted to come in with that in mind. And we started writing all these different percussion patterns inspired by Mediterranean and Middle Eastern grooves, as well as like tihais, which are sort of an Indian rhythmic concept.

And so we spent time putting layers and layers of percussion, in the way you have those big orchestras full of percussion in the Middle East. We wanted to evoke that kind of sound — and then bring in the cello, and the voice, and the piano, and these fragments later in the track.

Like, the chords go “Dum, bum.” These two hits that are supposed to represent sort of the system of education — like, beating you down, and you’re like trying to fight through it anyways and trying to bring your own identity. But then you’re trying to learn at the same time. So we kind of wanted to bring both the joys and beauty of education, but also some of the dangers and pitfalls of our education system simultaneously.

Rath: Then you have the movement — and I love this — it’s called code-switching, which really kind of goes to the sort of biculturality and triculturality. And I don’t know what’s kind of cool about it is that it’s not like East meets West. It’s sort of like East is West. It’s all mixed.

Morrin: Yeah, we were trying to evoke a lot of different things. How — wherever you’re from — we all grow up and learn how to change, how we talk and how we behave in different situations. And that’s part of learning and growing up. And it’s something a lot of my friends, for example, who have moved all around different countries throughout the world, they have to learn to adapt and figure out new ways of interacting with people.

So the suite actually kind of it has a dual metaphor there. It’s like the idea of of code-switching in terms of like the immigrant story and people learning new languages, that kind of thing, and also growing up from a teenager.

The first movement is like when you’re a younger child beginning out in your journey. And this is like the teenage years here, where you now have to talk differently to your parents and your friend group. And now you’re in that phase of life where you’re questioning everything. What is your identity? Who are you really? You’re going off to college and living on your own for the first time, as we all do at some point? So we were trying to evoke that spirit in that particular movement.

Ize Trio is performing several shows in New England in October, including a collaboration between Ize Trio and Edmar Colón at Goethe-Institut.