Album Notes

This is a duo recording of jazz piano and bass, performed live in an intimate parlor setting among enthusiastic jazz fans in Cincinnati, Ohio. The music includes standards by Gershwin, Kern, and Rodgers, jazz classics by Monk, Miles, and Strayhorn, and one original DeGreg compostion, written for the occasion.

Phil DeGreg is well known in the midwest as the house pianist at Cincinnati's Blue Wisp Jazz Club. He toured with Woody Herman's Band and has performed in concert with many well known jazz artists including J.J. Johnson, Scott Hamilton, James Moody, Gene Bertoncini, and Ira Sullivan. He has recorded seven CDs as a leader. He also is professor of jazz studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and author of the widely used text "Jazz Keyboard Harmony."

Paul Keller is one of the nation's finest jazz bassists. He is based in the Detroit area, where he leads the Paul Keller Orchestra and other bands. He toured for six years with Diana Krall and Russell Malone, and travels frequently around the country with trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, as well as playing several jazz parties throughout the U.S. He has appeared on over 60 CDs, and has performed in concert with many jazz greats including Mulgrew Miller, James Moody, Herb Ellis, Ken Peplowski, and Terry Gibbs. He is a true virtuoso on the bass.

Cincinnati Enquirer critic Larry Nager calls the recording "a primer on superb jazz piano on a dozen well chosen pieces....a masterful performance, finding deep emotion from the spaces between the notes." Butch Berman writes in his jazz newsletter: "DeGreg's use of space, richness of tone and lovely romantic lyricism caught my attention and touched my heart, not unlike the late Bill Evans, but with a definitive style of his own that makes him a first-call sessionman."