There are two contemporary pianists I never get tired of hearing. One is Ahmad Jamal, now in his seventies and still swinging like hell. The other is Lynne Arriale. I first came across her in the mid-1990s, when an acquaintance of mine took me to see her trio at Visiones, the now-defunct club in Greenwich Village. I was converted on the spot. What I most love about her music is that she treats songs as songs: it's no coincidence that she called one of her albums, Melody. You get a hint of what she's all about on this clip, a live extract of her cover of The Beatles' Come Together, with Jay Anderson on bass, the tireless Steve Davis at the drums.
If you prefer something more straight-ahead, try this performance of Seven Steps To Heaven, while her version of Abdullah Ibrahim's Mountain of the Night is as mellow as mellow can be.
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