Bill Anschell is a lot of things. He is house pianist and mainstay at Origin Arts, showing up on a wide range of projects. He also contributes to this publication, writing with grace on craft of jazz. But, late at night, he is a musical James Joyce, spinning musical thread off the top of his head. And so he does on Figments.

Recorded over a series of late nights, after practicing his chosen craft, Anschell clears his mind and...begins to fool around, but Anschell's "fooling around" amounts to a postmodern study of American music. When recording "What's Going On," Marvin Gaye recorded saxophonist Eli Fontaine while he was warming up. Gaye used some of this "warming up" to introduce the now famous social anthem. When Fontaine heard it, he tried telling Gaye that he was "just goofing." Gaye told him "you goofed off exquisitely." Bill Anschell, too, goofs off exquisitely.

His subjects or "Figments" range from his deconstructed "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" to a rollicking stride-piano rendering of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant." Anschell sits down, stream-of-conscious, and plays what first comes into his head, modulating his message in real time, allowing whim and fancy to inform his direction. And those directions are many from the heroin-loaded