Plays Bach: The 50th Anniversary Recording

For Jacques Loussier, the results of these experimental forays ultimately played a prominent role in the evolution of jazz. In the 1950s, he was a young pianist trying to find ways to improvise on the compositions of J.S. Bach. When he took the occasional break from his classical training to entertain friends by mixing elements of Bach with jazz, the results were something fresh, innovative and widely popular in the Paris club scene - popular enough, in fact, to launch a career.

Jacques Loussier assembled the first incarnation of his Play Bach Trio in 1959, and immediately forced musicians and audiences of both jazz and classical music to rethink the boundaries - and indeed, the similarities - between their respective genres. Five decades later, Telarc International - a division of Concord Music Group - celebrates this landmark anniversary with the release of Jacques Loussier Plays Bach: The 50th Anniversary Recording.

Recorded in France, Japan and England - and out of circulation since the early 1990s - the tracks are culled from various points along the prolific and influential trajectory of the Play Bach Trio following the group's lengthy hiatus in the early `80s (Loussier disbanded his original lineup in 1979 and retreated to the countryside of Provence to build a large studio as a place to compose and record in rural solitude).

For all of the brilliance captured in Jacques Loussier Plays Bach: The 50th Anniversary Recording, the veteran pianist-composer insists that this half-century mark is merely a stop on a much longer journey. "This is the best playing of my life," says Loussier. "And now we can look forward to our hundredth anniversary. Just another fifty years to go!"