Kenny Barron and Dave Holland

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It took quite a few years for Kenny Barron to be recognized as one of the giants of the jazz piano.

He was close to that level as far back as the early 1960s when he became a member of the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet, and he consistently grew in depth and creativity during the 60 years since then, quietly and steadily.

Barron and the masterful bassist Dave Holland played together on an occasional basis since the mid-1980s with Holland appearing on three of the pianist’s recordings (in 1985, 2014, and 2019) plus albums by Kent Jordan, Roy Haynes, and two by Nick Brignola.

Still, their duo performances (only 2014’s The Art Of Conversation was a duet album) are fairly rare.

On Charlie Parker’s medium-blues “Billie’s Bounce,” both Barron and Holland take superior solos that show why they are universally rated so high; this rendition is climaxed by their extensive tradeoffs.

-Scott Yanow

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