The Eddie Higgins Trio Haunted Heart Single-Layer Stereo Japanese Import SACD

Veteran jazz pianist Eddie Higgins has performed and recorded with many of the biggest names in jazz, including Coleman Hawkins, Jack Teagarden, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Wayne Shorter. His discography as a bandleader include more than 25 recordings.

Higgins' renditions...sound like the definitive jazz text from which other versions are departures.

Higgins is less a stylist than a brilliant generalist who ranges through the history of the music, selecting, winnowing and refining...draws from all eras of jazz piano without being tied to any of them.

This is a haunted, introspective album of piano-trio jazz very much indebted to Bill Evans and, to a lesser extent, George Shearing. Veteran Eddie Higgins mostly serves up standards from the Great American Songbook in a tasteful, unshowy, often gently swinging way, harmonically locked into the mainstream, occasionally throwing in a gentle quote for humor's sake.