Art Farmer, Fritz Pauer

Azure is a duo album by flugelhornist Art Farmer and pianist Fritz Pauer, recorded in Vienna in 1987 and released by Soul Note the same year. Three of its nine pieces are Pauer's: Nighttime, Sound Within An Empty Room and Song Of Praise. The others are jazz standards, Tadd Dameron's If You Could See Me Now, Benny Golson's Yesterday's Thoughts, Duke Ellington's Azure, Mal Waldron's Soul Eyes and Al Cohn's Danielle, plus an Austrian folk song, Blue Windows. The bare format stands apart from Farmer's other album of that year: in January 1987 he had been in New York with a quintet including Clifford Jordan, James Williams and Rufus Reid to record his Billy Strayhorn album for Contemporary.

Farmer and Pauer recorded at Austrophon Studios over two pairs of days, June 25 and 26 and September 9 and 10, 1987, with Alfred Schittler engineering, Oswald Greitsch assisting and Giovanni Bonandrini producing. Gennaro Carone mastered the tapes at PhonoComp in Tribiano, and Mike Hennessey wrote the liner notes. The record opens with the Dameron tune, and with no bass or drums the two instruments carry the harmony and the time between them. Pauer's Sound Within An Empty Room is the longest track at a little over six minutes, its title close to a description of the duo format itself. Blue Windows, the folk song, is the shortest at under three and a half. Waldron's Soul Eyes and Cohn's Danielle come near the end, before Pauer's Song Of Praise closes the album.

This is the Soul Note CD 121126-2 of the album first released in 1987, catalogued on LP as SN 1126.