Enough of this American jazz hegemony! Martial Solal, "an Algerian-born Frenchman who plays more like an American than perhaps any other foreigner,"¹ is here to show us a European take on jazz.

This album comes to us (mostly) live from the storied Newport Jazz Festival—charmingly, the back of the album explains that since the only festival slot available for Solal was too short for a full album, they pre-emptively recorded a rehearsal sequence and slapped the festival applause onto the end of those tracks "to make for more natural home listening." (Once you hear the same crowd whistling on half the tracks, you can't unhear it.)

Solal covers some well-trod standards in his set (e.g., "'Round Midnight", "Boplicity"), but the one that really caught my attention was an original composition of his: "Suite pour une frise." Don't be alarmed if the title makes no sense to you; as Martial himself put it: "If you don't understand French, I will make George Avakian to translate in the album notes." Avakian comes through, explaining that the piece is "inspired by an actual frieze; not a classical Greek one but a modern one painted on aluminum high on a modern glass-walled building in Brussels." I, however, needed things broken down even further; I had a vague recollection that a frieze is some architectural thing, but Wikipedia's definition—"even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon the architrave ('main beam') and is capped by the moldings of the cornice"²—left me with more questions than answers.

Allow me to spare you my confusion: if a building has a flat part above some columns, and especially if the flat part has a nice design on it, that's a frieze, more or less. Of course, the natural follow-up question is: can we locate the exact frieze that so inspired Solal? Well, the French Wikipedia page for the song mentions that it was commissioned for the inauguration of a frieze by Ralph Cleeremans (which demonstrated Cleeremans' novel "aluchromie" technique that allowed fixing pigment to aluminum). I was able to track down some general information about Cleeremans' work, and while I'm doubtful it's the exact frieze in question, you can purchase one of his originals for a cool 4000 Euros.

But, ah, back to the song itself: "Suite pour une frise" leaps out of the gates with forceful energy, and it builds tension early on that keeps you on the edge of your seat. There's a couple great sections where the bass takes the spotlight, but above all else, this one puts Solal's virtuosity front and centre. For me, that last ingredient is the key piece here—I deeply love the piano, but spartan jazz melodies on the keys just don't seem to grab me as much as they might on say, a saxophone. I'm a firm believer that if you can't play the prettiest notes, you ought to at least play the most notes, and on that metric, Solal does not disappoint. (Mind you, I'm not saying that the piano is inherently less musical than other instruments, as my wife would have you believe—a mournful Chopin is equally moving as a crooning sax, but I've yet to find the former properly represented in jazz.)

One final note: I love how much humanity a live recording captures. Yes, Solal's rhythms and melodies will continue to bounce around in my head, but so will his charming introductions ("…and now, Thelonious Monk's classique de jazz, 'Round Midnight"). I'm sure that to Solal, those off-hand remarks were an utterly forgettable part of the show, but on this album they can't help but colour the listener's overall perceptions—an unintended improvisation, recorded for posterity.

Favourite track: Suite pour une frise