Amani Ahmad Math City

Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse (1965-1966) brings forth a collection of previously unreleased recordings of the iconic pianist Ahmad Jamal captured live at the hallowed Seattle jazz club. Featuring trios with bassist Jamil Nasser, and drummers Chuck Lampkin, Vernel Fournier and Frank Gant.

An octogenarian jazz master who exerted an influence on not just other pianists, but most prominently on Miles Davis, Ahmad Jamal has remained a vital presence on the music scene since the 1950s. His nuanced 2017 album, Marseille, finds him drawing upon his years of experience with a set of originals and covers that reveal just how vital and creative he remains. Primarily, the album showcases three distinctly varied interpretations of the title track, a hypnotic, modal ode to a city he loves, and to a greater extent a country that awarded him the prestigious Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et de Lettres in 2007. In fact, Marseille was even recorded in France; specifically in the Parisian suburb of Malakoff. Joining Jamal are several longtime associates including bassist James Cammack, former Jazz at Lincoln Center drummer Herlin Riley, and percussionist Manolo Badrena.

"The trio was founded in 2017 by violinist Marina Yakovleva, her fellow-violinist and brother Mikhail Yakovlev and cellist Lev Sivkov. They chose the name “Trio Amani” in honour of the Russian composer Nikolay Amani (1872-1904), whose string trio they discovered in 2018 and premiered that year in Zurich. After a highly successful concert series, Marina, Mikhail and Lev invited violist Vahagn Aristakesyan to join them on the present recording of chamber music for strings in various scorings from Russia and Switzerland. The trio presented this programme in 2019 in a series of concerts in the composers’ homelands. The repertoire of Trio Amani comprises a wide variety of compositions for various formations, from duo to piano quintet.

Both albums presented here, Ahmad Jamal at the Top: Poinciana Revisited and Freeflight, offer excellent portraits of the great pianist in transition at the end of the '60s and beginning of the '70s. Both feature Jamal's great rhythm section of bassist Jamil Sulieman Nasser and drummer Frank Grant. The first date was recorded in in 1969 at the Top of the Village Gate in New York City. Its reveals Jamal playing in a more driving, percussive style, though he keeps his utterly elegant chord voicings intact. Check the opening reading of Rodgers & Hart's "Have You Met Miss Jones," played as a slippery, complex, hard bop tune with some modal and Latin elements added. The version of "Poinciana" here is quicker, deeper in the rhythmic cut…