Edward Simon - Solo Live

Recorded at Oakland’s Piedmont Piano Company on his 50th birthday in 2019, Solo Live is Simon’s first unaccompanied recording (and only his second album documenting a concert). Unedited, it’s a ravishing portrait of one of jazz’s most eloquent improvisers investigating a setting that’s become one of his primary outlets during the pandemic. Long leery of performing alone, a situation that leaves a pianist “really exposed,” he described the Piedmont Piano date as “a leap of faith. But I plan to be doing more solo piano playing and recording.”