Lewis Porter numbers among the most distinguished jazz educators in the world today in his role as Professor of Music at Rutgers University and founder and director there of the Master's programme in Jazz History and Research. He is the author of several books on jazz, including a definitive biography of John Coltrane. But while he has dedicated his life to the challenges of academe, he has also kept his jazz chops up. An accomplished pianist who is equally at home wrestling with the complexities of post-Coltrane (middle period) jazz with Dave Liebman as he is performing a solo set of his own compositions, Trio Solo thoroughly refutes George Bernard Shaw's maxim from Man and Superman that: ‘He who can does, he who cannot teaches’. In an album of 13 originals, plus the Edward C. Redding ballad ‘The End of a Love Affair’, he might appear to have given himself enough rope to hang himself, but what emerges is a well constructed album that moves through a succession of moods and tempos with a deceptive ease of execution that carries the listener with him. Throughout he avoids the apparent necessity of some to impress with gratuitous flourish or undue complexity, rather he displays the virtues of good, solid craftsmanship that like a Louis XV Chinoiserie dresser or hand-carved armoire, you can only stand back and admire.