Chet Baker Paul Bley Diane If I should lose you Ph R. Dumas Chet Diane Vavre, Rennes 87

The recording quality of every single one of these releases on this Danish label, is excellent. Though some of them are even recorded live, they all are recorded with incredible warmth and claritya kind of immediate presence, that allows the trumpeter s phrasing to be heard down to the breathy vibrato of each wonderful note. Most of the songs are down tempo songsballads which allow the two performers plenty of time to stretch out on solos; however, as much as I was worried that an entire album with just a trumpeter and a pianist would be somewhat too sparse to do justice to the songs, I was very pleasantly surprised at the arrangements of the Bley s piano playing is very sympathetic to Mr. Baker s warm, and simple, trumpet work. Oddly enough, I found Bley to be as interesting if not more so, in some parts, than the horn playing. No matter that the songs aresome of themquite long; both performers keep the arrangements moving ahead, and I just found myself li