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Jean-Michel Pilc was recently featured on BET on
Jazz’s Live at the Knitting Factory series. His most recent
album is titled Welcome Home and is issued by
Dreyfus Jazz, a French recording label that released bebop pianist Bud Powell’s Blue Note club
recording from the 1960s (which features Kenny Clarke). The session
opens with Miles Davis’ modal composition "So What" (from Kind of Blue) and
Pilc plays the composition out-of-time with bassist Francois Moutin
complementing him.
The trio covers the standards "I Got It Bad And That Ain’t
Good"
and "Stella by Starlight". Pilc does an excellent job on the
composition Solitude; the arrangement is almost as original as
the Charles Mingus version (from the Mingus, Mingus, Mingus
Impulse! album). The highlights for me are the trio’s takes on
Coltrane’s "Cousin Mary" and "Giant Steps". Also memorable is
Monk’s Rhythm-A-Ning, which is really just a cover for ‘Rhythm
changes’ (I used to play that number a lot with Reggie Workman’s
Ensemble). Drummer Ari Hoenig is exceptional throughout the album.
If
you want to know more about this group, or about the state of modern
French Jazz, I recommend visiting JazzValley.com
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