On July 14, 1986, Blue Note recorded a virtuosic live set from French pianist Michel Petrucciani, joined by guitarist Jim Hall and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, at Montreux Jazz Festival. The recording was released the next year as Petrucciani’s Power of Three, and is now being reissued as part of Blue Note’s Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Series. The new vinyl edition will be available on July 3rd.
The record is a mix of recordings with Petrucciani and Hall as a duo, as well as Shorter joining them in a trio. It was Shorter who came up with the album’s name, as Petrucciani once recalled: “Wayne is a science fiction fan, and he was reading a book called Power Of Three. He simply said, ‘Hey, that’s us, power of three.’”
Greatly influenced by the work of Bill Evans, Petrucciani found ways to accommodate his osteogenesis imperfecta (commonly called brittle bone disease) in order to master the piano. He began playing concerts in France as a teenager before moving to the U.S. in 1982. There, he met saxophonist Charles Lloyd, who was so impressed by his playing that he came out of retirement.
In 1985, Lloyd carried Petrucciani onto the stage of Town Hall in New York, where they recorded a performance for the film One Night with Blue Note. Petrucciani recorded his first album as a leader for Blue Note, Pianism, in 1986.
Shorter once shared that “Michel was a great musician, and great, ultimately, because he was a great human being, and he was a great human being because he had the ability to feel and give that feeling to others… He gave to others through his music.”
The Tone Poet Vinyl Edition of Power of Three was produced by Joe Harley, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog master tapes, pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI, and packaged in a deluxe tip-on gatefold jacket.
