In 1968, pianist Chick Corea, bassist Miroslav Vitouš, and drummer Roy Haynes made Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, a touchstone of modern jazz. But Trio Music, the group’s 1982 follow-up, goes in a bit of a different direction—two directions, in fact. The first album in this two-LP collection is all free improvisation, abstracted and full of timbral contrast over the course of five trio pieces, two piano/bass duos, and the Corea original “Slippery When Wet” (which the pianist’s Three Quartets band also played). The second LP, meanwhile, consists of seven Thelonious Monk tunes. He died in early 1982, and when Trio Music arrived later that year, the album landed as a gesture of great love and admiration to a departed giant of 20th-century music. The presence of Roy Haynes—the OG sideman to Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane, and, of course, Monk himself—lends a palpable weight to these trio ruminations. The free improvisations are richly varied, with an experimental flavor that harkens back to Corea’s earlier A.R.C. trio with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul, or even his work with Anthony Braxton in Circle. Trio Music ventures into that space a bit, using soundscapes and episodes of jagged, amorphous swing to create what feels like an album-length narrative. Vitouš is frequently heard with a bow, playing passages marked by a deep, lyrical urgency throughout (something he’d explore further on the group’s 1984 release Trio Music, Live in Europe).