Effortlessly eclectic and encyclopedic in his knowledge of most jazz forms from classic to free, Harlem stride to Tristano, Ban creates the impression that each track could be the thresh old to a different album, but the whole coheres around his most personal and exposed improvisation yet, with “Cristina’s Hope” at the end (she is the dedicatee of the whole) as raptly self-transcending as anything Bill Evans ever committed to record. An astonishing stylist with a near-perfect instinct for dynamics and effective pedaling, Ban is now unquestionably in the major league of contemporary pianists. In his day, and this is one of them, there’s hardly anyone to match him.
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