The Awakening by Ahmad Jamal is one of the great piano trio albums with a jewel in the crown.
Ahmad Jamal – The Awakening (Verve, 2023)
Ahmad Jamal changed his style in the 1960s compared to the elegant minimalism of the 1950s which brought him fame and fortune. He started using a lot more dynamics, varying his trademark elegant phrases with a much more vivid attack and larger sound.
Perhaps the best example is his long romantic solo introduction to Hale Smith’s “I Love Music” where he uses big gestures and fast runs which sounds as grand as Rachmaninoff, before he settles into a nice groove when he is joined by his rhythm section with bassist Jamil Nasser and drummer Frank Grant.
The performance is the crown jewel of this trio album which is one of Jamal’s best. Some of the quality has to do with the nice selection of songs. Jamal is not afraid to include songs from the best, even if they are younger and possibly influenced by him, like Herbie Hancock whose wonderful “Dolphin Dance” is given another classic performance which highlights the harmonic and rhythmic interplay between Jamal and Nasser.
A nice selection of songs
Other recent songs on their way to becoming classics when Jamal recorded them are “Stolen Moments” by Oliver Nelson and “Wave” by Bossa Nova composer Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Jamal also brought two compositions of his own to the recording date, including the swinging title track which he tosses and turns in the way Art Tatum would do songs, until there is finally release in a long grooving passage of the kind that Jamal excelled in.
As a piano trio album this recording is up there high on my list among other favorite albums by Monk, Bill Evans, and Jamal himself. It is to his credit that he kept on evolving in the 1960s. With the kind of success and popularity he had in the 1950s it must have been tempting to try and repeat it.
Jazz Desk 
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