Back in the late 1980s, Boston-based Greek-born, prolific pianist-composer-educator Pandelis Karayorgis (who co-runs the Driff Records label) and then-spouse, contemporary composer of mostly microtonal concert music Julia Werntz, were students in reed player Joe Maneri’s Microtonal Composition and Performance class at the New England Conservatory. Almost four decades later, they join forces to create a fully composed microtonal piano suite, the 80-minute Capricious Nocturnal Variations, which became the source material for Karayorgis’ old modern jazz trio, with double bass player Nate McBride and drummer Randy Peterson, who expands its themes and special tuning. Karayorgis plays the grand piano tuned in the standard equal temperament, and a keyboard tuned to the twelve-note, microtonal scale used in Werntz’s suite, and the trio is joined on one piece by
