Recorded in 1969, this stellar MPS album was Romanian pianist Yancy Körössy’s first recording in the West. Willis Conover, the Legendary cold war jazz disc jockey for The Voice of America was a fan of Yancy’s music and subsequently obtained a visa for the pianist to emigrate to the US. Yancy spent the next decade in the States playing with many jazz greats before returning to Europe. For the album Körössy picked Austrian Hans Rettenbacher, one of the premier European bassists, and Swiss drummer Charly Antolini, who has spent a career playing with some of the masters of the music. There are shades of pianists as diverse as Tristano and Peterson in Yancy’s play, as the hard-swinging rhythm section leads the way through All the Things You Are, and Bye Bye Blackbird sings and swings. Yancy’s Sorrow smacks of blues and Horace Silver funk, and an up-tempo Stella By Starlight explores the outer limits of the tune’s harmonic structures. Check out the blazing bass solo. Identification is a hair-raising pyrotechnical trip towards freedom, whereas I Can’t Give You Anything starts off in stride before Yancy transforms the piece into a tasty modern jazz treat. Rettenbacher’s I’m On My Way has an infectiously funky gospel feel, and Stompin’ at the Savoy moves from swing to avant-garde. A technically masterful player, Yancy Körössy absorbed the modern jazz lexicon, and added some musical language of his own. Identification signifies that he deserves to be an essential part of the piano pantheon.
