Mal Waldron Searching in Grenoble The 1978 Solo Piano Concert

Searching In Grenoble: The 1978 Solo Piano Concert is a previously unissued recording of jazz icon Mal Waldron's mesmerizing performance at the "Five Days of Jazz" series in Grenoble, France on March 23, 1978.

When Mal Waldron died in 2002, he was known to most jazz fans as Billie Holiday's final accompanist, and the composer of the standards "Soul Eyes," "Left Alone," and "Straight Ahead," the latter with Abbey Lincoln. His most significant leader date was 1961's The Quest, with Eric Dolphy and Booker Ervin on Prestige, where he served as house pianist. After suffering a total breakdown following a near-fatal heroin overdose in 1963, he was forced to relearn the piano. He left for Europe in early 1966, and his "second life" began. Waldron's many solo recordings, beginning with 1966's All Alone, are tantamount to the creation of a different jazz language. Its traits were angular, quizzical repetitive left-hand vamps and chords, underscored and appended by inquisitive harmonic inquiries on the right, drawn chiefly from the blues but also the jazz tradition and classical music from Chopin to Schoenberg…