Behind me just before the second set began at the Bird's Eye in Basel last night, someone's phone rang with one quick repeated note. Up on stage in front of me, pianist Shai Maestro smiled, chuckled, reached into the piano to mute some strings, and began to copy the ringtone on the piano with a staccato effect. Soon, guitarist Camil Arcarazo Sempere, bassist Matteo Bortone, and drummer Amir Bresler joined in. For minutes on end, the quartet improvised around that one-note rhythm before finally seguing into Maestro's composition "The Dream Thief". Such wonderful playfulness, humor, and spontaneity ran through both of the quartet's two nights at the Bird's Eye this week. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 September 2026)