Concentrating on lyrical and elegant playing that alternately evokes cocktail bars and concert halls,
Giants of Jazz: Piano features some of the best players to ever tickle the ivories. The 12 cuts are mostly piano trios, with
Horace Silver,
Bud Powell, and
John Lewis showing up on group cuts from
Cannonball Adderley,
Dexter Gordon, and
the Modern Jazz Quartet, respectively.
Lennie Tristano shows up with the most challenging piece of the collection, "Supersonic," whose singular approach to the piano stands out even among the top-shelf company he is nestled in with on this disc. Ballads get excellent treatment from
Erroll Garner with "September Song" and
Hank Jones with "'Round Midnight." Most of the performances, however, are rousing uptempo numbers like
Marian McPartland's boisterous reading of "The Lady Is a Tramp." Little is provided in the way of group information or why these particular cuts were chosen and the sound quality is sometimes lacking -- several of the cuts are live, too, but listeners will only discover this after digging in with their ears. Those are trifling quibbles, really, since this is intended as an introduction to the style and some of the players who make mainstream jazz swing. As such, it does a fine job. ~ Wade Kergan