Michel Petrucciani’s penultimate album for Blue Notice Data, Playground, was one he notably treasured. “It had more rhythm, more percussion, more synthesizer, and quite suggestive melodies,” he stated. “It made me rediscover the love I have for jazz and its beautiful, harmonically complex ballads.” The album, like 1988’s Michel Performs Petrucciani, was created at New York’s Clinton Recording Studios, the place work started on March 14, 1991. Petrucciani performed piano and synthesizers on Playground, and wrote 10 of the 11 featured tracks.
“Laws of Physics,” the only real non-Petrucciani tune, was composed by synthesizer participant Adam Holzman, who performed a key function in shaping the sound of the album because the co-arranger of Playground. Holzman had just lately completed working with Miles Davis (he had been his musical director for a time) and stated he was partly drawn to working with Petrucciani as a result of “I was going to be a little more integral to what Michel was doing compared to Miles… and he gave me a chance to expand not only as a player but as a writer. Michel’s concept was to have a standard jazz piano format with synthesizer orchestration. It was just too interesting to pass up.”
Take heed to Michel Petrucciani’s Playground now.
Petrucciani stated he had been “very influenced” by the sound Davis and Holzman had created on their album Tutu and had determined he wished to do “something electric.” The addition of synthesizers and electrical bass guitar within the ensemble created a extra funk-rhythm sound. So did the atmospheric drumming of Omar Hakim, a musician voted greatest electrical percussionist in a Nineteen Eighties Fashionable Drummer journal ballot. Hakim combined completely with bassist Anthony Jackson, a participant credited with the event of the trendy six-string bass. Petrucciani was a fan of his work with Davis and the pianist stated he particularly wrote a number of the tunes for Jackson as a result of “I know the way they play… how he enjoys doing the chord changes.”
Petrucciani stated that a number of the tunes for Playground had been written “in a hurry,” throughout a troublesome interval in his life when he was “drinking a lot of vodka” and watching reviews of the Gulf Warfare on tv. Nonetheless, the tender “Rachid,” written in honor of his stepson, and the reside favourite “Miles Davis’ Licks” had been profession highlights. Playground reached the highest 10 of Billboard’s Jazz Album chart after it was launched on June 6, 1991. Though Petrucciani went on to file the solo acoustic piano tribute album to Duke Ellington (Promenade with Duke) subsequent, he remained happy with Playground and the way in which it introduced a “Miles Davisian color to my music.”
Three years after the success of Playground, Petrucciani was made a knight of the Legion of Honor in Paris. Even after leaving Blue Notice, he remained busy, usually performing greater than 100 live shows per yr as much as his dying in 1999 on the age of 36. He all the time stated that he loved dwelling in a rush (“I hate wasting time,” he remarked) however finally he left a distinguished physique of music, together with the energetic and shifting Playground.
Take heed to Michel Petrucciani’s Playground now.
