A lot of people first became aware of French pianist
Michel Petrucciani through his work with
Charles Lloyd in the early '80s. Standing barely three feet tall, he lived with complications from glass-bone disease, a painful, genetically transmitted condition known to medical science as osteogenesis imperfecta. While growing up,
Petrucciani suffered hundreds of bone fractures, and throughout his meteoric career he sometimes broke fingers during performance. Extraordinarily gifted and restlessly active in spite of it all, he continued to perform and record like a whirlwind before succumbing to a pulmonary ailment at the age of 36 in January 1999.
Petrucciani appeared before the public as a soloist at the Alte Oper Concert Hall in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on February 27, 1997. Portions of that performance were posthumously released by the Dreyfus label just months after his passing. Ten years later the complete unedited concert recording was made available as a double CD, expanded from 11 to 20 tracks. Here is your opportunity to experience
Petrucciani in person, fully alive and in excellent form. Everything people remember about him is suddenly brought forward with rewarding immediacy, including the sound of his voice. All of his recordings are worth exploring. This one qualifies as utterly essential. ~ arwulf arwulf