Pianist Mike Longo has been playing jazz all his life – on the knee of his father, as a teenager with Cannonball Adderly, as a student of Oscar Peterson, for 25 years with Dizzy Gillespie, and several times on-stage in jam sessions with Miles Davis. Longo learned his lessons well and knows all the moves, as you would expect from one of the elder statesmen of jazz.
But when you listen to his new album, A CELEBRATION OF DIZ AND MILES, you realize right away that Longo is not playing it safe and playing old standard versions of nightclub favorities. No. On this live album Longo and Paul West and Ray Mosca take the jazz piano trio sound into an improvisational realm where only a few brave souls dare to venture. This is not a trio Longo has played with for years. These are old friends he has performed with in other contexts. So with no rehearsals they marched on-stage, listened carefully to where each other was headed, and created some of that old jazz magic.
This is an album worth telling your audience about -- a solid jazz outing.
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