Bollani

The pianist has made solo albums before but nothing quite like this, where he not only plays concert grand but also Fender Rhodes and, on a few tracks, sings too. His exuberant style, his technical facility and his sense of fun are clear throughout, from the opening, funky Alleanza and a darkly toned, choppily-rhymed romp through Italy’s most popular song Quando, Quando, Quando to Ary Barroso’s Aquarela Do Brasil, the soul-jazz evergreen, Horace Silver’s The Preacher and Duke Ellington’s Mount Harissa, closing with the classic ballad You Don’t Know What Love Is.

Jazz pianist Stefano Bollani was born in Milan, Italy, on December 5, 1972. He began playing piano as a child in order to accompany his singing, but soon concentrated solely on the instrument, enrolling in a conservatory in Florence when he was 11. There, he studied both jazz and pop music, and after graduating in 1993, added his keyboard skills to albums for many of Italy's top pop stars, including Laura Pausini, Irene Grandi, and Jovanotti. When working with the latter in 1996 he met avant-garde jazz trumpeter Enrico Rava, who invited the young pianist to play with him in Paris, an opportunity Bollani quickly accepted.

Bollani is the pianist who made such a vivid impression on trumpeter Italian Enrico Rava's recent Miles Davis tribute, also for France's Label Bleu. Rather unexpectedly - and perhaps a little uneasily - for a musician who is evidently both a formidable virtuoso and a structural provocateur, Bollani has opted for a largely orthodox acoustic piano-trio set, bookended by two more abstract unaccompanied pieces.

Recorded live at Umbria Jazz late last year, with no preceding rehearsals, this is a mostly fabulous two-pianos set by superstar Corea, who was 70 in June, and the 38-year old Bollani.The performances are playful and intensely melodic, with only the opening improvisation sounding a little forced.

Italian pianist Stefano Bollani has again partnered with the top-flight Danish rhythm section of bassist Jesper Bodilsen and drummer Morten Lund to create something very precious: an hour of emotive music that culminates in the blissful title cut, "Gleda (Joy). While their previous release, Mi Ritorni In Mente (Stunt, 2004), featured standards with Bodilsen as leader, Gleda, by way of Bollani's modern arrangements, turns a century of Scandinavian tunes into an improvisational delight.