Hank Jones Trio - !!!

Recorded At Brassgroup Acireale Jazz Festival, July 17,199. Marco Pennisi, Red Records - "Those who organise concerts often do not listen to them except distractedly, caught up in the many small problems that revolve around the event. It was customary at the Brassgroup in Acireale – of which I was also a member – to get together a few days after the end of the festival, to finally listen carefully to the recordings of the concerts.

I have a very precise memory of the silence and our astonished glances that crossed each other, listening to the concert recording. The comments, colourful and unpublishable, revolved around the pianist’s apparent ease in unravelling complex situations, the trio’s monstrous interplay, the fact that the sum of the three of us sounded at least five, and that something special had happened that evening. And the measured enthusiasm of the trio at the dinner after the concert made sense, which we understood with days to come. Today as then, listening again to the music of that evening, I feel the same astonishment. And it comforts me that Luca Conti, who wrote the liner notes, thinks so too.

The recording had a series of happy coincidences and a kind of autonomous stubbornness to come to light. First, the festival’s audio service, which recovered some residual data from years of concerts and made me a gift of it, 40 years later. Then Isaiah Thompson who guested on his ‘Composed In Colour’ for our label, Kenny Washington who knew Hank Jones’ copyright lawyer and activated the contact. Finally, the possibility of sharing files with the already ailing Mraz, with whom we formalised an agreement that was later perfected by his wife Camilla, when George was already gone.

This disc is dedicated to the memory of Nicola Consoli, president of the Brassgroup in Acireale on whose sofa at home the listening took place."

1. Interface (H. Jones)
2. A Child Is Born (T. Jones)
3. Willow Weep For Me (A. Ronell)
4. Scrapple From The Apple (C. Parker)
5. ’Round About Midnight (T. Monk)
6. Moose The Mooche (C. Parker)
7. Blue Monk (T. Monk)
8. I’ll Remember April (G. De Paul)
9. Wind Flower (H. Jones)
10. Interlude (J.J. Johnson)
11. Recorda Me