The word influential is much abused, but if anyone deserves the epithet it's pianist Ahmad Jamal. There may be musicians from jazz's golden age who are better known, though there aren't many whose influence has been so pervasive. And even fewer who are still making records.
The Pittsburgh-born pianist has, at 83, been around long enough to have had a seminal influence on musicians who’ve passed into legend – most famously Miles Davis, who drew much of his repertoire from the Jamal’s celebrated recordings made in the early 1950s at Chicago’s Pershing Lounge. Fast forward 60 years and you find hip-hoppers such as Kanye West and Jay-Z still checking out Jamal and sampling his recordings.
Jamal is still out there, doing his own thing. Indeed, what separates him from other giants of his generation is that he never did embrace the modernist ethic of constant reinvention. Rather, Jamal has spent his long career honing his own very singular approach to improvisation, in which a melodic fragment is turned this way and that until it gives up its truth.
Whether on standards from the American songbook or latterly on his own compositions, Jamal goes in search of the perfect phrase. His rhythm section, meanwhile, gets so deep into the groove that when the phrase comes, it sparkles like a precious stone polished on a wheel.
Jamal enjoys particular acclaim in France, and for this recording he returned to Studio La Buissonne near Avignon, on the same Steinway that he recorded 2012's much praised Blue Moon. The same quartet is once again at work, with Reginald Veal on bass and Herlin Riley on drums (both regulars in Wynton Marsalis's group) and percussionist Manolo Badrena adding another layer to the intense grooves.
Nowadays those grooves are more likely to be Cuban inflected, with a nod to funk and hip-hop, but Jamal's essential style is unchanged: on seven originals and a few choice standards, including I'm in the Mood for Love and I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good, he digs deep into the melodies and comes up with more gems. ahmadjamal.net
