Giovanni Mirabassi remains one of my favorite Jazz pianists. I really love his trio efforts, be it on Terra Furiosa, Live in Toyko, or, probably my preferred one, Architectures.
Mirabassi is Italian, but has been living in Paris for many years. As mentioned above, he trio output (mainly with Gianluca Renzi and Leon Parker) is fantastic, but he’s also collaborated with some excellent singers, e.g. Angela Elvira Herrera Zaparta and Maikel Ante Fajardo on Adelante, and on Sarah Lancman’s previous 2018 albums A Contretemps and Inspiring Love. Both albums only featured Sarah on the title, now we have a recording where both Lancman and Mirabassi share the cover. The two already met in 2015 and have toured together.
Sarah Lancman
Sarah Lancman is a young French singer, who studied in Paris, and has released three albums so far.
There is no shortage of excellent Jazz singers today, but still, Lancman has a very recognisable, unique voice. Not suprisingly, she won the first price in a jazz contest hosted by Quincy Jones.
Giovanni Mirabassi – Sarah Lancman – Intermezzo (Starprod 2019)
So what do you get? Well, you could argue, is this still Jazz?
You basically get beautiful duos where Mirabassi plays in a very intimate and connected way with Sarah, who singing exclusively in Italian (note the album cover kind of gives it away) on this album.
Every once in a while, Olivier Bogé joins playing the saxophone, with a sound somewhat reminiscent of Stan Getz. So who cares if this is Jazz or not?
All of this is just hugely enjoyable, beautiful, intimate music, and really worth checking out.
As many of you know, this really isn’t my day job. I work in a completely unrelated industry. Recently I’ve traveled on average 2-3 times per week, so my blogging has taken a back seat.
I’ll still try to get a blog post done every two weeks. The best you can do, instead of having to check back on my somewhat unreliable posting schedule, is just to sign up with your email on the right, so new updates will come to your inbox, or follow me on WordPress. Like this you don’t miss any update.
Live Jazz Recordings
Furthermore, given my workload, I’ll shamelessly steal from my own forum post here at Computer Audiophile, where I post quite regularly on music, and less so on audio gear.
I have previously written about my 25 Essential Jazz albums, but had never done a specific post on live jazz albums. Triggered by “Route66″‘s question, I went through my album library and had a look at which live albums I can particularly recommend. The OP was particularly interested in small Jazz club-type venues, so this further limited the selection to the following 9 albums. Some of them I’ve written about previously, some of them are new to this blog.
Cannonball Adderley: Mercy Mercy Mercy – Live At “The Club” (Capitol 1966)
I’ll mention Bill Evans twice on this blog post. Bill Evans during his career had three major trios (see also this blog post on his middle trio). He started, after the work with Miles Davis, with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. Unfortunately, LaFaro passed away in an accident shortly after the album below was recorded. Many still consider this early trio his best. I don’t necessarily agree, as I really love his later trios very much as well.
Waltz for Debby is part of several recordings taken by the trio live at the Village Vanguard. The Village Vanguard is one of the legendary NYC jazz clubs that is still open today. If you want more of it, you can also get The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings 1961 box, which includes the titles above. You’ll see it popping up a number of times below in this post.
The advantage of getting the individual Waltz For Debby album is that you can try to find one of the many audiophile remasters. I’ll leave it to others to debate which of the several available remasters is the best, and will recommend the HDtracks version which is already pretty good. Musically in any case, this album, is an absolute must have and really helped define the category of the Jazz Piano Trio.
My Rating: 5 stars
Bill Evans Trio: Consecration
Consecration is already mentioned as part of my 25 Essential Jazz albums. This is Evans’s latest trio, and actually his very final recording before his early passing.
Do I prefer Consecration over Waltz For Debby, or vice versa? Why decide? Get both!
Brad Mehldau: The Art of the Trio Vol. 2 – Live At the Village Vanguard (1991)
This one is a new addition to the blog.
I’ve written about my love/hate relationship with Brad Mehldau several times (see here for example), but Vol. 3 of his early series The Art Of The Trio is listed in my 25 Essential Jazz albums. This live album is not as good as the studio vol. 3, but still very much worth having. Especially for Moon River, a particular favorite of mine. Recordede at the same Village Vanguard as the Bill Evans 30 years earlier.
My rating: 4 stars
The Jazz Messengers At The Cafe Bohemia Vol. 1 (1955)
I haven’t written about Hard Bop for a long time. Actually, I haven’t even listened to Hard Bop a lot recently, which is a pity, as this is one of my favorite genres.
The above 1955 album is one of those who started it all. Look at the line-up. Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Kenny Dorham. All of these had successful solo careers after which (check out my blog for recommended albums in the above mini series).
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any new audiophile remastering of this album, so you can probably just as well go with the regular CD remastering by Rudy Van Gelder (although I’m not a particular fan of his remasters in general).
My rating: 4 stars
Giovanni Mirabassi: Live At the Blue Note Tokyo (2010)
Giovanni Mirabassi was also mentioned several times on this blog, including as part of my 25 Essential Jazz albums.
This album, recorded live in Toyko, is not my absolute favorite, but still a very good performance. What is nice about it that the trio takes time for each track, often 8-10 minutes, allowing melodic development and soloing.
My rating: 4 stars
Christian McBride Trio: Live At The Village Vanguard (2015)
No, I haven’t selected albums simply on the fact that they were recorded at the Vanguard. It is just simply a very popular recording spot.
And look at the lineup here: Paul Motian was already the drummer on Waltz For Debby above, and Marc Johnson was the bass player in Evans’ middle quartet (but has later played a lot with Pieranunzi).
This is a very good live album, but doesn’t get to the intensity swing-wise of his master. It’s very much worth having still. Pieranunzi really develops the lyrical side of Bill Evans even further.
Check out this video, how Paul Motian called up Pieranunzi for this one week live gig. The text is in Italian, but you get enough excerpts of the music to get a good idea.
My rating: 4 stars
Michael Wollny Trio: Weltentraum Concert Edition – Live At The Unterfahrt
Michael Wollny is one of the most creative pianists we have today. This is the live album of Weltentraum, recorded at the Unterfahrt jazz club in Munich in 2014. This album is really as good as the studio one, in many respects even better. Very much worth having.
My rating: 5 stars
You can find the newly listed albums here, for links to the other albums please go to the original blog post.
I’ve mentioned Giovanni Mirabassi already in my 25 essential Jazz albums. I consider him one of the best contemporary Jazz pianists.
Unfortunately his masterpiece Architectures is a bit hard to get these days as the rights were sold to a Japanese label.
Terra Furiosa (Discograph/Minimum 2008)
Luckily he has done other recordings that are much easier to purchase, like this 2008 recording, Terra Furiosa.
On bass, we have Gianluca Renzi who still plays with Mirabassi today, and the American drummer Leon Parker.
On this album, you clearly hear the influences of the late Bill Evans style, and also Enrico Pieranunzi. That said, he’s made something very personal out of all this, already given that he essentially plays only his own compositions.
My favorite songs is Last Minutes, where Gianluca Renzi gets some time for a beautiful bass intro, turning into a samba-like rhythm when Parker kicks in.
But even beyond this song, you’ll find stunning melodies, seamless interplay between three outstanding musicians. The music never stops evolving, and while the album remains in a certain mood most of the time, there is never any feeling of boredom at all, there just too much going on.
To be fair, I could never live with only 25 albums, I’d be totally bored at some point. There is too much great music out there to discover, that’s why I’m purchasing a lot of new music every month.
But if I had to choose my personal favorite 25 Jazz artists and list one of their albums (didn’t go for top 10 as this would have really been TOO narrow), I’d go for these. I wouldn’t call this a “must have” list, this is obviously completely subjective, as all of the rest of my blog. But you wouldn’t go wrong in checking them out and see if you like them. There are some obvious candidates in there that you’ll find in every TopXX list out there (I checked many, to make sure I don’t miss anything), some hopefully less obvious personal choices as well. They range from 1958 to 2013.
By the way, I’m cheating a bit, I’m talking about 25 albums, not CDs, so you’ll find a couple of multi-CD albums in there. In the age of the digital download, it doesn’t make any difference anyhow.
The ordering is completely random, I just numbered them so I don’t lose track. As said before, I try to limit to one album per artists, as you could easily build a list of top 25 albums with Keith Jarrett or Bill Evans on their own (maybe this will come in a future post).
Well, obviously my selection had to have a Keith Jarrett album. As I wanted to choose only one per artist, I’m really under pressure here. With so many good Jarrett trio albums out there, which one do you choose? This choice is a bit arbitrary, and could change tomorrow, but I find myself to go back to this album very very often. However, it could have been easily as well Standards Live, Standards in Norway, Whisper Not, or Inside Out.
This album is mastered by the same Jan Erik Kongshaug, that also is responsible for Badgers and other Beings by Helge Lien (see my review here) and many other audiophile treasures.
2. Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue (1959)
Sorry, BIG no brainer alarm here. But this is just so freakingly good (thanks probably mainly to Bill Evans), that no matter how often you listen, you just get drawn into the atmosphere over and over again.
Plus, the recent 24/192 remaster (available in mono or stereo, I personally prefer the stereo version) sounds so great that you think you’re sitting in the studio with the guys.
3. Giovanni Mirabassi – Architectures (1998)
I haven’t written about Mirabassi on my blog yet. What a shame. Will rectify that soon. In the meantime, this is trio jazz at its best (a guitar is added in some songs).
Mirabassi is still one of my favorite musicians, especially live, however, I still prefer his earlier albums to the more recent ones. Again, more to come.
5. Bill Evans – Consecration – The Final Recordings Part 2 (1980)
Bill Evans, another genius, and I haven’t even mentioned him on this blog yet (except for above in the Kind of Blue entry). What a sin. Again, plenty of outstanding albums to choose from. Which trio? LaFaro and Motian, Gomez and Morell, or Johnson and LaBarbera? Well, all are great, so hard to judge. I nevertheless have a particularly strong relationship to this album, as a 1 CD compilation of this last concert series of his was among my first even Bill Evans albums.
Is it really necessary to purchase this 8CD box? And to e.g. get 5 different versions of “Your Story” (the album has takes from different days, so quite some repeats in the playlist). And it get’s even worse, “The Last Waltz” is another 8CD box from the same setting. Well, maybe not universally. And there is obviously the great tragedy of knowing that shortly after these concerts this genius was finally killed by his drug habits.
But when you listen to these recordings, there is so much intimacy, so much creativity, so much melancholy, that you can’t help but be fully absorbed by the music.
Anyway, more to come on Bill Evans on my blog in the future.
My favorite Hancock album for the famous title track and Dolphin Dance.
11. John Coltrane – My Favorite Things (1961)
Well, obviously Coltrane had to be there. I hesitated quite a bit if I should nominate A Love Supreme or Giant Steps, but somehow this album personally touches me even more, both for the title track and one of my favorite versions of Summertime.
musicophilesblog - From Keith Jarrett to Johannes Brahms 