# Awesome Jazz Piano Duets...



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

*Jazz Piano/Harp*


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)




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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

My favorite jazz piano duo remains, since the mid 1980's when I first heard their music, Ran Blake and Jaki Byard. The album of note is _Improvisations_ on the Soul Note label.

Indeed, it was the mid 1980's when I was driving through a Philadelphia suburb on my way to a university where I was doing graduate work in Theatre that I happened to hear a two-piano jazz number on the car radio (tuned at the time to the city's jazz station, call letters elude me now). My first thought was it was something by Bartok. Yes, Bela Bartok. And I was stunned. I recall pulling the car to the side of the road just to listen to the music, which was going on for quite some time. Banging, clanging, evocative, haunting melodic music -- atonal at times, complex throughout. I was eager to hear what the piece was, and who was performing it.

The piece ended and the announcer spoke too quickly for me to focus on a title or the artists. All I was certain of was that one of the piano player's names had a "B" in it. And no, it wasn't Bartok.

I actually combed albums for years seeking the piece. Multiple pianists, one with a "B" in his name, playing a Bartok-like jazz piano piece. Alas ... it eluded me for years.

Well twenty-some years later I began collecting the jazz series (box sets) titled The Complete Remastered Recordings on Black Saint & Soul Note. (I currently have 43 of the multi-disc boxes in the series.) One of them, released in 2015, is titled for Ran Blake, and one of the seven albums in the set is _Improvisations_, featuring a duo with Jaki Byard. Imagine my elation when I popped this disc into the CD deck and at track 7 (following some 30 minutes of sheer beauty) I re-heard those tones from so many years back in a Philadelphia suburb when I had pulled my car to the curb to listen to music so surreal and haunting that it practically ripped my soul from my being. The tune was "Sonata For Two Pianos", 10 minutes and 38 seconds of power and glory and duo piano sound that I couldn't have imagined anyone but perhaps Bela Bartok to have composed. Yet here it was in an improvisation by Blake and Byard.

I treasure the disc, and the Ran Blake box, and the entire Complete Remastered Recordings on Black Saint & Soul Note, all 43 box sets, several hundred discs. But the "Sonata For Two Pianos" remains special, and I play it often, to make up for all those years when I didn't have access to it. (I'm playing it now as I type this.)

Ran Blake, Jaki Byard: _Improvisations_. Essential for your own collection.


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## Jay (Jul 21, 2014)




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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

SONNET CLV said:


> My favorite jazz piano duo remains, since the mid 1980's when I first heard their music, Ran Blake and Jaki Byard. The album of note is _Improvisations_ on the Soul Note label.
> 
> Indeed, it was the mid 1980's when I was driving through a Philadelphia suburb on my way to a university where I was doing graduate work in Theatre that I happened to hear a two-piano jazz number on the car radio (tuned at the time to the city's jazz station, call letters elude me now). My first thought was it was something by Bartok. Yes, Bela Bartok. And I was stunned. I recall pulling the car to the side of the road just to listen to the music, which was going on for quite some time. Banging, clanging, evocative, haunting melodic music -- atonal at times, complex throughout. I was eager to hear what the piece was, and who was performing it.
> 
> ...


I didn't know about this album! I'm a big fan of both, Ran Blake in particular is one of my favorite jazz pianists. I have to listen to this.


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