Power Of Three (Blue Note Tone Poet Series)
Michel Petrucciani
Power Of Three is Michel Petrucciani’s live trio album for Blue Note, recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 14, 1986 and originally released in 1987. It presents the French pianist in an all‑star summit with guitarist Jim Hall and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, alternating between intimate piano‑guitar duos and piano‑guitar‑saxophone trios that explore originals by each musician alongside jazz standards. The album’s title came from Shorter, who was reading a science‑fiction novel called Power of Three and joked that it perfectly described their collective chemistry onstage.
The Blue Note Tone Poet Series reissue treats this Montreux set as a high‑priority audiophile release: produced by Joe Harley, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog master tapes, pressed on 180‑gram vinyl at RTI, and housed in a deluxe tip‑on gatefold jacket. Musically, the record moves between two configurations—duos like “Careful,” “Waltz New,” and deeply felt readings of “Beautiful Love” and Duke Ellington’s “In A Sentimental Mood,” and trio performances such as Shorter’s “Limbo,” Petrucciani’s “Morning Blues,” and Hall’s calypso‑flavored “Bimini,” which together showcase conversational interplay, lyrical sensitivity, and some of Shorter’s finest mid‑’80s jazz playing. Critics have highlighted the concert’s “powerful silence”—3,500 listeners held in rapt attention—as well as the way Petrucciani and Hall seem almost complementary halves of a single instrument, with Shorter slipping in and out to add color and narrative tension, making Power Of Three both a summit meeting of three virtuosos and one of the most vivid documents of Petrucciani’s cooperative, highly expressive artistry.
Power Of Three (Blue Note Tone Poet Series)
Michel Petrucciani
Power Of Three is Michel Petrucciani’s live trio album for Blue Note, recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 14, 1986 and originally released in 1987. It presents the French pianist in an all‑star summit with guitarist Jim Hall and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, alternating between intimate piano‑guitar duos and piano‑guitar‑saxophone trios that explore originals by each musician alongside jazz standards. The album’s title came from Shorter, who was reading a science‑fiction novel called Power of Three and joked that it perfectly described their collective chemistry onstage.
The Blue Note Tone Poet Series reissue treats this Montreux set as a high‑priority audiophile release: produced by Joe Harley, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog master tapes, pressed on 180‑gram vinyl at RTI, and housed in a deluxe tip‑on gatefold jacket. Musically, the record moves between two configurations—duos like “Careful,” “Waltz New,” and deeply felt readings of “Beautiful Love” and Duke Ellington’s “In A Sentimental Mood,” and trio performances such as Shorter’s “Limbo,” Petrucciani’s “Morning Blues,” and Hall’s calypso‑flavored “Bimini,” which together showcase conversational interplay, lyrical sensitivity, and some of Shorter’s finest mid‑’80s jazz playing. Critics have highlighted the concert’s “powerful silence”—3,500 listeners held in rapt attention—as well as the way Petrucciani and Hall seem almost complementary halves of a single instrument, with Shorter slipping in and out to add color and narrative tension, making Power Of Three both a summit meeting of three virtuosos and one of the most vivid documents of Petrucciani’s cooperative, highly expressive artistry.