Passion Flower-The Music Of Billy Strayhorn

By 1979 Fred Hersch had no records under his own name. On Yama that year he turns up as a mid-twenties unknown in the small print of a date led by two established horn players — years before anyone bought a record for his name.

Tom Rainey's name now travels with free improvisation. But the paper trail here runs the other way: from Forward Motion (1991) to Passion Flower (1996), it is mostly standards work in Fred Hersch's group — the avant-garde drummer's documented decade is a piano trio.