CD: Enrico Pieranunzi, Live in Paris

(Challenge)

This double set finds classically trained Italian piano virtuoso Enrico Pieranunzi playing live at Le Duc des Lombards in Paris in 2001, with singer Dee Dee Bridgewater's rhythm section of Dutch bassist Hein Van de Geyn and French drummer Andre "Dede" Ceccarelli.

The repertoire includes a scattering of Pieranunzi materials and plenty of standards and jazz landmarks, from Fats Waller's Jitterbug Waltz to Wayne Shorter's Footprints via Body and Soul.

There are a lot of great acoustic-piano trio sets around, but Pieranunzi's limpid sound, vaulting imagination, focus and musicality sometimes make him seem like a more traditionally song-rooted Brad Mehldau.

Body and Soul is full of spins and turns expressed in pliable, lightly struck runs, while Footprints gathers speed in sketchy, darting chords and chattery cymbal-playing. What Is This Thing Called Love? is taken at such a speed that it engagingly suggests the interrogator can't stay in one place long enough to find out.

There's a huge piano technique and a big vision at work here. It's beautifully recorded, too, if you don't mind Ceccarelli's cymbal beat sounding like loose change jangling right inside your ear.

* Download: Footprints; What Is This Thing Called Love?

Contributor

John Fordham

The GuardianTramp

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