Drawn from two different recording sessions at the Lobero Theatre, The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 10 showcases Horace Tapscott in an especially exploratory mode. Nearly all original compositions here - "Miguel," "Roses In Bloom," "First Love," "Searching," "Upside Down," "Maya & Me" - hauntingly introspective pieces performed with a sense of creative searching that's incredibly powerful despite the absence of other instrumentation. The album runs seventy-five minutes. That's a significant amount of solo piano from any artist, let alone one whose technique could be as physically demanding as Tapscott's. But the depth never wavers. Each composition unfolds like a private meditation, the pianist working through themes that seem to mean something personal, something beyond the notes themselves. The titles alone suggest intimacy: names, states of being, relationships.

One exception breaks the original-compositions-only pattern: John Lewis's "Afternoon In Paris." The Modern Jazz Quartet co-founder's elegant theme receives a treatment that honors its sophistication while bending it toward Tapscott's own harmonic language. It's a reminder that for all his avant-garde associations, Tapscott was fluent in the whole tradition - from Central Avenue bebop to the free explorations that would define his later decades.

Tom Albach believed the solo sessions represented the most important music Tapscott ever made. Over thirty hours were captured during those midnight Lobero dates between 1982 and 1985. Vol. 10, released in 2003, continues the archival project that became Albach's life work - documenting what happens when a master pianist sits alone with a Steinway in a resonant room, with no commercial restrictions whatsoever.