Toots Thielemans - The Live Takes, Vol. 1 (2016) Hi-Res

Toots Thielemans began his career as a guitarist, though he gained great fame as the most widely known jazz harmonica player, literally without much competition for most of his career. This collection of live performances from 1994 to 1998 was mostly recorded by his personal engineer Vincent Tempels, except for those performances taking place outside Belgium. The opening medley is a lot of fun, combining a deliberate, romantic "I Loves You, Porgy" and an uptempo "Summertime" by connecting them with a brief snippet of Miles Davis' "All Blues," with superb accompaniment by pianist Nathalie Loriers. Kenny Werner, who has often been Thielemans' keyboardist of choice late in his career, is heard on several tracks, adding lush synthesized strings behind the leader in his moving composition "Hard to Say Goodbye" and the elegant rendition of "Body and Soul" (which sounds very different from the usual arrangements with Werner's interesting choice of backgrounds). The third keyboardist is Michel Herr, who is Thielemans' sole accompanist on piano for the thoughtful, imaginative setting of "Stardust," though he proves to be a bit distracting on keyboards in "I Do It for Your Love." Thielemans' fans who expect more space devoted to standards and jazz works without the electric keyboards may be disappointed with this compilation, but the harmonica great shines throughout these concert excerpts recorded late in his career.