Jim Hall – It’s Nice to Be With You: Jim Hall in Berlin (MPS Vinyl LP)

This intimate June 1969 musical get-together was due in large extent to the close friendship between the revered guitarist Jim Hall and legendary German writer/critic and producer Joachim-Ernst Berendt. As Hall, his wife and daughter were visiting him in Berlin, Berendt noticed that, although he had been recording extensively with a number of major jazz figures over the last years, including several collaborative get-togethers, Hall had not recorded an album solely under his own name in over a decade. Berendt immediately set up a trio recording for Hall that included two internationally renowned musicians with whom Hall had previously worked, the Afro-American expatriate bassist Jim Woode and Swiss-French drummer Daniel Humair. In such a transparent setting, Hall unfurled his finest qualities. Humair perceptively summed it up: Hall played with “more clarity, more purity, more sensitivity” than any other guitarist of the period. It resulted in an album of intensely introspective music.

1. Up, Up And Away
2. My Funny Valentine
3. Young One, For Debra
4. Blue Joe
5. It’s Nice To Be With You
6. In A Sentimental Mood
7. Body And Soul
8. Romaine