Martial Solal - 1959 & 2001 - exclusif

 Another bit of music here, finally! I hope you'll enjoy! The links will be posted in the comments, I'm still uploading! This is in the lossless FLAC format (you'll need this if your burner won't allow you to burn the files directly).


(photo by Geert Verbeke)

Martial Solal is one of jazz' great piano players. Born in Algiers in 1927 he came to Paris in 1950 and soon started recording for Vogue (buy the discs on French Amazon - they have a sale of most "Original Vogue Masters" for 7 euro a pop - lots of great things there!). He got his big break in 1960 when Jean-Luc Godard (one of my semi-gods, by the way) asked him to write the score for his classic debut film, "A bout de souffle".
In 1963, Solal played at the Newport Jazz Festival in the US and an album was released (which was in fact a studio recreation with fake applause) on RCA. His trio in the 60s featured Guy Pedersen on bass and drummer Daniel Humair, with whom he recorded a few albums. Later he regularly played with Lee Konitz (check out "Star Eyes", their great duo album on hat records).
Later he recorded a few classic albums such as "Triangle" (with Marc Johnson & Peter Erskine) and "Ballade du 10 Mars". 
He played with Stéphane Grappelli, Michel Portal, Sydney Bechet, Lucky Thompson, Joachim Kühn, Johnny Griffin, Didier Lockwood, and many others. Also he won the Jazzpar Prize (as usual there was an album made on that occasion).
Solal continues to release albums, in solo, with his larger bands ("Dodecaband", "Newdecaband"), as well as with other musicians such as Dave Douglas and Eric Le Lann.

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Martial Solal - Paris 1959, 2001 & Interview

Paris (FR) - 1959

Roger Guérin - trumpet; Martial Solal - piano; Paul Rovère - bass; Daniel Humair - drums

1. Suite en re-bémol (Solal) 13:42

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Paris (FR), Salle Olivier Messiaen - December 27, 2001

Martial Solal - piano

2. Zag-Zic (4:45)
3. I Can't Give You Anything But Love (3:19)
4. What Is This Thing Called Love (9:21)

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Paris (FR) - date unknown

5. Interview (3:56) [cuts in]

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TT: 35:05

Sound: A- (#1, Interview), A/A- (#2-4)
Source: France Musiques "Jazz sur le vif - spéciale" / 2006-01-09


Note: "Suite" has most likely been commercially released on a long-gone 4LP set with music from the ORTF vaults (a perfectly legit release), while the 2001 set most likely has never seen commercial release.