Michel Petrucciani
Power Of Three

When I bought this record, I barely understood what jazz was; and I couldn't figure out what the heck a guitar was doing in a trio playing this musical genre: it's an instrument born to play rock, I thought, let's not kid ourselves... (blessed ignorant youth!).

When this concert was recorded, Montreux was the home of the greatest jazz festival in the world: yes, it was... And that evening the McCoy Tyner group with Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, and John Scofield also performed, as well as a single set by Al DiMeola. When they met, I wasn't even in my twenties: just twenty years have passed since then, since that July 14th, 1986, when Michel Petrucciani decided to invite them to play with him on the stage of that beautiful Swiss city: Jim Hall, guitarist, Wayne Shorter, saxophonist.
When you listen to this CD, you will be impressed by what is described in the booklet as "the powerful silence of 3,500 people".

Let's go in order, starting from the preamble. Hall and Petrucciani had already played together, in December of the previous year, in Paris, and you can feel it as the tracks progress: there is a natural chemistry between the two, so much so that they play as if they were complementary to one another. Shorter plays the role of the third "wheel": his presence is always felt, although, inexplicably, he disappears from the third track onward, only to reappear in all his splendor in the final track. The beginning, however, is all his with the first minutes of "Limbo", his creation, which unfolds giving equal stage to both the guitar and the piano, culminating in a three-way finale. "Careful" is Hall's brainchild, and it feels like it was conceived for his instrument. The tempo is maintained just enough until "Morning Blues" arrives, and it's evident that it's a Petrucciani piece with that melancholic vein running through a slow tempo, where from the beginning the saxophone screeches and pulls the notes until they tear at your heart. "Waltz New", "Beautiful Love", and the best piece, "In a Sentimental Mood" are a musical conversation, life, its folds, and twists discussed between two old friends, one on guitar and the other on piano: the tone of the conversation is always good-natured, at times it rises with emphasis, never with malice; other times it lowers to whisper a confidence or the melancholy for what is amiss. The finale is in the Caribbean-flavored "Bimini", with an uninterrupted minute of applause and the feeling of a missing encore, more likely due to space constraints on the vinyl where it was originally printed.

I rarely give the highest rating for a live album. But live jam sessions, in the world of jazz, are in a category of their own, very different from the concerts of a single musician or a group in other musical fields. Michel, forgive the sentimentality, but your absence is deeply felt!