American guitarist Jim Hall resides at the top of the jazz guitar pantheon. At the time of his death in 2013 at the age of 83, he had long been considered one of the jazz greats, a major influence on generations of jazz guitarists. It seems that virtually every major musician wanted to play with Hall. His work as a sideman ranged from swing era giant Ben Webster to new music pioneer Ornette Coleman. HIs recording credits include a series of classic albums with groups headed by Jimmy Guiffre, Sonny Rollins, and Bill Evans; Hall often spoke of Rollins and Evans as two of his major influences. This intimate June 1969 musical get-together was due in large extent to the close friendship between the 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.
