Alexander Hawkins Song Unconditionnal - Itk439 - Jazz - by Intakt Records

British pianist and composer Alexander Hawkins is one of Europe’s most innovative pianists, working in a variety of creative contexts and always constructing a unique sound world. As a style-defining and imaginative voice in contem-porary jazz, Hawkins provides further testimony to the art of his solo playing, six years after his last solo album (In-takt #330). Song Unconditional is as playful as it is intense – firmly rooted in tradition, yet endlessly searching and ad-venturous. Each of the 13 short pieces explores one or more expressive possibilities of the piano and are, in the words of Adam Shatz in the liner notes, “... marvels of compressed exploration. To listen to them in succession, as they’re meant to be heard, is to enter a vast, sophisticated, and deeply con-sidered sound-world. Song Unconditional is also gorgeous, sometimes startlingly. It belongs, I think, in the company of the most impressive solo piano albums of recent years, no-tably Craig Taborn’s Avenging Angel and David Virelles’ Nuna.