Jazz Memories from Saint Germain (1959)

Known as the Charlie Parker of the piano, Bud Powell was a towering jazzman who changed the way musicians see harmony. His life was marked by extreme success and, at the same time, plagued by illness and misfortune. Here, in 1959, he had just moved to Paris following more than a decade of seminal Blue Note recordings, as well as periods of hospitalization and treatment (including electroconvulsive therapy) for mental illness, with schizophrenia being one diagnosis. In Paris, however, he was just as dazzling and alive as ever in one of the last recorded performances he ever gave.