Kenny Barron Trio

Kenny Barron is often called the “pianist’s pianist.” Elegant, sensitive and lyrical, Barron’s impeccable keyboard skills have made him a favorite of jazz fans everywhere for over forty years and forty albums. A native of Philadelphia, Barron was still a teenager when he first started working with many of the jazz greats, including Philly Joe Jones, Lee Morgan, Roy Haynes, and Dizzy Gillespie. In the ’80s, he co-founded the jazz super group Sphere, a tribute to Thelonious Monk. He also entered into a long association with saxophone legend Stan Getz while continuing to lead his own groups, often in the classic piano trio configuration. A 2010 NEA Jazz Master, his prodigious recording output has received nine Grammy award nominations over his illustrious career. It’s not for nothing that the Los Angeles Times calls Kenny Barron, “one of the top jazz pianists in the world.” Whether the musical mood is a smokey blues, a romantic ballad, a hot Latin groove, or a sultry swing number, the Kenny Barron Trio, featuring bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa and drummer Johnathan Blake deftly navigates the creative realm of modern jazz improvisation with self-assured style and grace. Remarkably, while piano maestro Kenny Barron has recorded more than 40 albums as a leader and countless others as a valued sideman, he had never documented his impressive working trio of bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa, with him for 20 years, and drummer Johnathan Blake, onboard for the past 10 years. That missing piece in Barron’s lengthy discography has been sublimely addressed with his new recording, Book of Intuition (Impulse Records – March 4, 2016), a refined, elegant, lyrical and swinging affair of new and reimagined originals and a triad of covers, including two obscure Thelonious Monk compositions.