Page 95 - BBC Music (January 2020)

French flair:
Petrucciani on
stage in 1994

From the archives

Geoffrey Smith on the exuberant French pianist Michel

Petrucciani who never let his disability cast a shadow

Right up to his death 20 years ago, in 1999,
Michel Petrucciani was a unique phenomenon on
the jazz scene. Crippled by a congenital illness,
the diminutive pianist had to be carried on to
the stage by his star companions, who vied for
the honour of bearing him to the keyboard like
a precious gift. And that’s certainly how he was received by
audiences, to whom he was not just a sympathetic oddity, but
one of the stellar musicians and communicators of his time, a
byword for virtuosity, originality and wit.
Those qualities come shining through Colors (Dreyfus Jazz
5385626830) a new Petrucciani compilation drawn from the years
before his sad demise at the age of just 36. Though his physical
condition meant he was never likely to make old bones, the joie
de vivre of every track gives the lie to any hint of encroaching
fatality. He obviously loved to play, and exuberance is always
ready to break in, allied to prodigious technique, imagination,
sure-footed swing and a passion for melody.
All the pieces on these two CDs are Petrucciani originals, in
a wide array of moods and a variety of line-ups. But the chief
glory of the set is the leader’s pianistic command, evoking
the styles of his keyboard peers with his own distinction. His
impressionistic harmonies may bring to mind his hero Bill Evans,
but touched by Petrucciani’s warmth and freshness; he can
be as rhapsodic as Keith Jarrett, though freed from Jarrett’s
histrionics, and his technique equals the dazzlement of Oscar
Peterson, without Oscar’s urge to overwhelm.
But it’s Petrucciani’s spontaneous pleasure in performance
that distinguishes these discs. On the infectious, two-beat
vamp of ‘Cantabile’, for instance, he brings the house down
with a pulsating lick that goes on for almost a minute. ‘Trilogy
in Blois’ is a long, three-part meditation, full of shifting moods
and colours, while his post-modern boogie-woogie tour de
force ‘She Did it Again’ fizzes across the piano’s full range. The
informative notes convey the reverence in which the pianist was
held by such luminaries as Ahmad Jamal and Charles Lloyd, and
they’re entertaining too: ‘She Did it Again’ turns out to have been
inspired by the bottom-burps of Lloyd’s dog. Twenty years on, this
joyous set confirms Petrucciani’s stature in the pantheon of jazz.