Michel Petrucciani - Power of Three (Blue Note Tone Poet Series 180g Vinyl LP)

Michel Petrucciani featuring Jim Hall and Wayne Shorter - Power of Three | Vinyl LP - 2026 Blue Note Tone Poet Series Reissue (BT-85133, all-analog mastering by Kevin Gray, 180g pressing at RTI)

• A one-night summit between three masters, recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 14, 1986, with Petrucciani on piano, Jim Hall on guitar and Wayne Shorter on tenor and soprano saxophone
• Blue Note Tone Poet Series reissue, supervised by Joe Harley, mastered all-analog from the original tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI with a Stoughton Printing tip-on jacket
• An unusual piano-guitar-saxophone trio, alternating between duo performances (Petrucciani and Hall) and trio pieces with Shorter joining on three of the five tracks

Michel Petrucciani was twenty-three when this concert was recorded and had already led eleven dates as a leader. Producer Mary Ann Topper had paired him with Jim Hall in late 1985, and the chemistry was immediate. A piano-guitar duo is already a delicate format. Adding Wayne Shorter's saxophone to three of the five pieces here could easily have tipped the balance, but the opposite happens. "Limbo", Shorter's composition, opens the album with Shorter on tenor, and the three musicians find a way to occupy the same harmonic space without crowding each other, Hall's warm, clean tone sitting between Petrucciani's percussive attack and Shorter's longer lines. "Careful", a Hall composition, strips back to the duo, and the interplay is remarkable, each musician comping behind the other's solos with a sensitivity that sounds like years of partnership rather than months. "Morning Blues", Petrucciani's own piece, closes Side A with Shorter on soprano saxophone, the thinner reed cutting through the piano and guitar texture in a way that opens the sound up.

Side B gives both tracks room to stretch. "In a Sentimental Mood" runs over twelve minutes as a Petrucciani and Hall duo, the Ellington ballad played with patience and an attention to dynamics that rewards the length. Petrucciani was a lifelong Ellington devotee, later recording an entire album of his music, and the affection is audible here. "Bimini", Hall's calypso-inflected closer, brings Shorter back on tenor for ten minutes that swing harder than anything else on the record, the three musicians trading phrases over a rhythmic pulse that Petrucciani drives from the piano. Shorter later said the album title came from a science fiction novel he was reading at the time. David Rubinson produced, with Topper co-producing, and Dave Richards recorded the concert at Mountain Studios.

This Tone Poet edition was supervised by Joe Harley, mastered all-analog by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, with lacquers cut by Gray, and pressed on 180g vinyl at Record Technology Incorporated. The Stoughton Printing tip-on jacket reproduces Edouard Curchod's cover photography. A double-sided insert carries Syd Schwartz's new liner notes alongside Fernando Gonzales' original notes from 1986.