It's limiting to claim Enrico Pieranunuzi is Europe's greatest jazz pianist since he is one of the world's greatest jazz pianists and Live In Paris provides eloquent testimony of this. It numbers among the great piano trio recordings in jazz. With Hein Van De Geyn on bass and ‘Déde’ Ceccarelli, both excellent musicians closely attuned to Pieranunzi's style, he opens CD 1 by segueing four compositions – ‘Overthree’, ‘Body and Soul’, ‘I Hear a Rhapsody’ and ‘Footprints’ – for 31 minutes and 25 seconds of intense, uninterrupted music making; and then, with barely a pause for breath, he's off again – a 12 minute version of ‘I Fall In Love Too Easily’, where he tips his hat to Bill Evans before launching out as his own man at double tempo. This is followed by a humorous intro on ‘But Not For Me’ before winding up the set with an 11-minute original, ‘Hindsight’. That's 61 minutes and 54 seconds that's passed in a blink of an eye and CD2 is equally mesmerising. A concert pianist by training who has passed his wisdom on to up-and-coming concert pianists in Italian academe, he brings a concern for evenness of fingering, evenness of touch, precise articulation and thoughtful use of dynamics to jazz, while accelerando and ritardando is employed to a degree unusual (albeit masterfully) in jazz. Not a percussive pianist, his remarkable technique allows him to express a seemingly endless flow of ideas as mind and body respond as one – every song he plays is artfully rearranged to become a mini-concerto in its own right. He thinks in terms of broad, sweeping musical landscapes within which his musical adventures are enacted. Songs you have heard 100 times before are made new, his structured improvisations resemble a series of movements, each one building on the last to produce an extended improvisation whose impact can only be fully absorbed after repeated listening. This is state-of-the-art jazz piano, and the bar has been lifted high. As Thomas Conrad noted in the American publication Jazz Times: “Pieranunzi is one of the most creative and complete pianists now playing jazz anywhere on the planet”.

Find It: Still available on the challengerecords.com website at full price, this neglected classic can be picked up for around £12-£18 on eBay and Amazon.