This solo recital couldn't have been released in the performer's lifetime. Flanagan, who died in 2001, was one of the great pianists, contributing to epochal recordings of Rollins, Coltrane and Wes Montgomery before starting a long partnership with Ella Fitzgerald. Yet he never saw himself as a soloist. This 1994 performance, for a small audience in Germany, was given reluctantly - and he certainly didn't want it recorded. But of course, he played beautifully, starting with two tunes by Tadd Dameron, going off-course a little with a vapidly polite blues but then weaving harmonic and melodic spells on songbook standards and on Rollins's 'Valse Hot'. Gorgeous.
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