Just Friends is a 1998 jazz album by French pianist Martial Solal, featuring bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Paul Motian. The trio is highly regarded for it's blend of high-energy, straight-ahead swing and avant-garde improvisational complexity. The album features a mix of jazz standards and original compositions by Solal. Critics have noted the trio's remarkable technical facility, harmonic imagination, and ability to navigate both aggressive, complex avant-garde passages and traditional swing.

Voici un temoignage eclatant de la virtuosite et de la complicite entre deux figures majeures du jazz francais, le pianiste Martial Solal et le trompettiste eric Le Lann. Les deux artistes ont developpe une connivence musicale unique, un dialogue spontane, quasi-telepathique, qui se caracterise par une liberte totale, une ecoute mutuelle exceptionnelle et une prise de risque constante. "Portrait in Black and White" est une conversation � la fois intime et audacieuse entre deux geants, capturee dans l'instant magique et suspendu d'un concert. Augustin Bondoux / Patrick Fremeaux Solal et Le Lann ne jouent ni du son ni du souffle, encore moins de la virtuosite. Ils jouent la musique (.). Se laisser embarquer. Oublier la technique, la performance et passer � l'essentiel Francis Marmande, Le Monde Ensemble, le pianiste et le trompettiste vont au bout de leur individualisme Alain Gerber, Diapason Here is sparkling evidence of the entente and virtuosity that can exist between two major figures in French jazz, namely pianist Martial Solal and trumpeter eric Le Lann. Each of these artists has developed a unique understanding of the other, enabling them to construct spontaneous, almost telepathic conversations whose principal quality is total freedom, a liberty of expression fostered by an exceptional ability to hear one's partner while constantly taking risks... "Portrait in Black and White" is one of those conversations, and it has daring and intimate exchanges between these two giants captured live in a magic moment onstage. Augustin Bondoux / Patrick Fremeaux THE MAN I LOVE (GEORGE & IRA GERSWIN) - PORTRAIT IN BLACK AND WHITE (ANT�NIO CARLOS JOBIM) - ROUND ABOUT MIDNIGHT (THELONIOUS MONK) - WELL YOU NEEDN't (THELONIOUS MONK) - BODY AND SOUL (EDWARD HEYMAN, JOHNNY GREEN, ROBERT SOUR ET FRANK EYTON) - LE BLEU D'HORTENSE (eRIC LE LANN) - QUE RESTE-T-IL DE NOS AMOURS (CHARLES TReNET / LeO CHAULIAC) - INVITATION (BRONISLAW KAPER/ NED WASHINGTON) - WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE (COLE PORTER). MARTIAL SOLAL PIANO - eRIC LE LANN TROMPETTE

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Surprises, saxophonist Dave Liebman said when asked about playing with the master pianist Martial Solal. Their second Sunnyside album of duets finds them before a knowledgeable and appreciative audience at Studio 104 de Radio France, a center of uncompromising music in the City of Light. "The surprises are endless," Liebman told me. "Martial doesn't want it to be perfect. He's twenty years older than I am, and, to borrow a term from a newer generation, he wants the music to be 'killer.' When he plays, it is definitely killer." There is an exhilarating range of music in this second Solal-Liebman album, which follows their Masters In Bordeaux, (ssc 1489). Whenever their next encounter may be, let us hope that someone with recording equipment is invited. The world needs more of the infectious spirit that these masters found together in Paris.

2017 release. Jazz is supposed to be spontaneous and unpredictable. When you play with Martial this couldn't be more true. He never repeats himself; his harmonic choices range from Tatum to McCoy to Schoenberg; he will bend the form of a composition in the moment and as anyone who is familiar with Martial's piano playing knows, his technique is flawless (approaching 90 years old as I write in May 2017!) // The several times we have played together in the past year plus have been quite significant for me. While the repertoire played represents the standard jazz song book (chosen at the gig itself), to interact with arguably the most famous European jazz artist of all time playing standards is not something one does every day. At the same time the challenge for me is to adjust and react to the Maestro's ideas at a level that I have rarely had to deal with, particularly in the bebop idiom.