The Third Man is a duo album by trumpeter Enrico Rava and pianist Stefano Bollani, released in October 2007. The two Italians had played together since the early 1990s. Bollani calls Rava his mentor, and Rava has called Bollani perhaps the most gifted pianist since Art Tatum. Here they make freely lyrical jazz from very mixed sources: jazz history, South American music, Italian song and contemporary composition. Everything was shaped into one programme under the supervision of producer Manfred Eicher.
The album followed two ECM projects in which they had already worked side by side, Rava's quintet record Easy Living and the trio Tati with Paul Motian. They had also recorded as a duo before, for Label Bleu and Philology, though Bollani has said neither earlier project sounded like this one. The session took place in November 2006 at the Auditorio of Radio Svizzera in Lugano, with Stefano Amerio as engineer. Bollani noted that the room was neither a studio nor a concert hall, and that the two could hear each other without headphones.
About half of the twelve pieces are by Rava, with one by Bollani, Santa Teresa. The set opens with Estate, the song by Bruno Martino and Bruno Brighetti that is close to an Italian standard, taken slowly at more than eight minutes. The title track is a free improvisation, dedicated after the recording to Orson Welles and the film noir tradition, built on the spot by the two players. Antonio Carlos Jobim's ballad Retrato Em Branco Y Preto appears twice, the second time as a variation, as does Rava's tender Birth Of A Butterfly. Moacir Santos's Felipe and Rava's angular Cumpari complete the South American and Italian sides of the programme.
The record was chosen as Recording of the Month by Stereophile and received a Choc from Jazzman. In Jazzwise, Duncan Heining wrote that the album "feels like eavesdropping on the conversation of close friends", and called Bollani the trumpeter's perfect foil. In Die Zeit, Peter Rüedi heard the two Jobim versions turn into a kind of imaginary bossa nova, with a subtle irony as counterweight to the tenderness. Reviewing it for MusicWeb International in 2008, Tony Augarde concluded simply, "This is a CD I am going to keep."
This is the CD edition, ECM 2020, first released in 2007.
