These two albums are of a piece, the Riverside release documenting Getz's November 1959 appearance at Stockholm's Nalen ballroom and the 2CD Storyville set recorded in a Copenhagen studio just two months later. The live tracks, from tapes that had been lost for 52 years and only discovered last year, have the edge because of the immediacy of live performance. Getz is exemplary, and incredibly, is still one of the most underrated saxophonists in jazz (who was paradoxically admired by the two saxophonists who overshadowed him, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins; Coltrane once saying, “We'd all play like Stan Getz if we could.”) Only 33 at the time, he was already a saxophone master, able to plumb a seemingly inexhaustible well of inspiration and ideas. What is especially fascinating is the presence of the legendary Swedish pianist Jan Johansson, Getz's pianist of choice during his European sojourn, who a matter of weeks later would define a European perspective on jazz with Jazz på Svenska in a style quite removed from his forthright accompaniment here. Getz is generous in ceding him much solo space, to which he responds with concision and depth. The Storyville set, numbering 17 tracks in all, remarkably contain only one duplication of the 12 numbers recorded at Nalen – ‘Younger than Springtime’. Again, Getz is a model of melodic invention performing at a high level of creativity. Well supported by his Scandinavian accompanists it affords a detailed examination of a jazz great in his prime.