Concerts Inedits [Live]

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Pianist Michel Petrucciani's death in early 1999 passed without much notice in the U.S. This three-CD box set arrives in late 2000 to display several sides of the late pianist's fine, precise, and often genuinely exciting playing. The first CD finds him soloing at the Festival d'Antibes in 1993; the second is a duo concert with bassist Niels Henning Orsted Pedersen at the Copenhagen Jazzhouse in 1994; and the third is a trio with his brother Louis Petrucciani on bass and Lenny White on drums, recorded at Nabari in Japan in 1994. All three concerts are rich with jazz standards and ballads, and each shows just how wonderfully expressive his playing could be. But it's on the solo disc that he shines, playing not so much like Bill Evans, to whom he was sometimes obliquely compared, but with an energy and percussiveness closer to Oscar Peterson's. Petrucciani also had the ability to find new meaning (or maybe discover original sources) for some of jazz's most overplayed classics. On "Take the A Train," for example, he finds a boogie-woogie prototype for Duke Ellington's composition, and "Caravan" he plays with a Mediterranean attitude. "'Round Midnight," on the other hand, emerges as downright funky.

Because of the malady (malfunctioning osteogenesis) that gave him his tiny size and kept him in constant pain, there is a tendency to wonder that he could play at all. But these three concerts remind us that Petrucciani was one of the best pianists of his generation, and someone whose work deserves closer attention. This set is something of a memorial, but also an excellent introduction to him. --John F. Szwed

Concerts Inedits,Michel Petrucciani,Dreyfus,Contemporary Jazz,Jazz,Jazz Music,Pop,Post-Bop

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