Renato Sellani is the grand old man of Italian jazz piano. This rare solo recording at Gipico Incontri is a kind of "portrait of the artist" date that showcases not only his technique -- which is among the greatest in Europe -- but what meaning he's been able to glean from the standards and the sensitivity and heart he's been able to place in his own compositions. Sellani's particular strong point is that he is a supreme architect of harmonic invention. His depth of field for touching upon subtle and hidden sonorities in order to move his harmonics into ever-widening chasms of melodic truth is almost unparalleled over the world. Listen to how he wrings the fickle sonances out of Benny Golson's "I Remember Clifford," Gordon Jenkins' "Goodbye," or even the shimmering ostinato he discovers hidden deep within the soul of Jobim's "How Insensitive" or Bacharach's "Alfie." Many pianists have used these very same tunes as a showcase for their legato phrasing or as vamps toward some kind of improvisatory flair. For Sellani, these are songs, and as such they ought to be sung with all the elegant nuance a voice can muster. That his voice happens to be the piano is of no consequence and is perhaps a greater exhortation to seek them. The highlights of the set, however, lie not in these heartbreakingly beautiful and graceful renditions, but in his reading of Miles Davis' "Spanish Mood" and in his own "Autoritratto," which ends the disc. On the Davis tune, Sellani looks to the lower register to find a few different places of minor key consonance in order to introduce the melody quietly in the middle register and slip both blues and tango motifs into his arpeggios. The spaciousness and crystalline silence in the body of the title track offers a fluid, near-ghostly body for Sellani to hang his chorded melody onto before moving through two melodic statements simultaneously with glissandi ringing off the black keys in counterpoint to his cascading diminished ninths. Chilling and moving, it is his finest achievement as a composer. This is one of two solo piano records from Italy to own. The other is Riccardo Zegna's Andalusia. Zegna, however, would assert that it is Sellani who is the true master, and has on many occasions. ~ Thom Jurek