Venus – The Amazing Super Audio CD Sampler Vol. 9: The Piano Trio in Fifteen Different Voices

A jazz piano trio can look almost modest when the musicians first take their places. There is no brass section waiting to explode, no vocalist standing beneath a spotlight and no orchestra filling the stage. There are only three instruments: piano, double bass and drums. Yet when the right musicians begin to play, that apparently simple formation can hold an entire world of rhythm, melody, tension and silence.

That world is the subject of Venus – The Amazing Super Audio CD Sampler Vol. 9, an ambitious audiophile jazz compilation that brings together 15 different piano trios from the Venus Records catalogue. Issued in Japan on October 21, 2015, under catalogue number VHGD-109, the album carries the subtitle Venus Great Piano Trio <3>. It completed a three-volume survey in which Venus Records presented 45 piano trios across three separate collections. With a running time exceeding 88 minutes, Vol. 9 is less a conventional sampler than a full evening of high-resolution jazz listening.

The story begins with Bud Powell.

David Hazeltine’s trio opens the album with “Cleopatra’s Dream,” one of Powell’s most recognisable compositions. It is an inspired starting point because the piece immediately places the listener inside the language of modern jazz piano. The melody arrives with a sense of urgency, while the trio format reveals the relationship between rhythmic precision and improvisational freedom. Hazeltine does not treat the composition as a historical artefact. Instead, his trio gives it fresh movement, allowing Powell’s bebop vocabulary to feel alive rather than preserved.

That opening performance establishes the purpose of The Amazing Super Audio CD Sampler Vol. 9. This is not merely a collection of pleasant piano standards selected to demonstrate an expensive audio system. It is a journey through contrasting ideas about what a jazz piano trio can be. Some performances are romantic, others muscular. Some remain close to the traditional songbook, while others move toward modal jazz, contemporary composition and unexpected reinterpretation.

The atmosphere changes as the Kenny Barron Trio enters with “I’ve Never Been in Love Before.” Barron has long been admired for a style in which technical authority never overwhelms emotional grace. The Frank Loesser song becomes a graceful conversation, with the piano carrying the melody while bass and drums give it shape and momentum. Following the intensity of “Cleopatra’s Dream,” the performance feels like a door opening onto a more reflective room.

Then comes Barry Harris, a pianist whose musical identity was deeply connected to the bebop tradition. His trio’s performance of “Bag’s Groove” brings the album closer to the blues. Written by vibraphonist Milt Jackson, the composition is built from material that appears straightforward until great improvisers begin finding new possibilities inside it. Harris approaches the tune with the confidence of someone who understands that swing is not simply a tempo but a way of organising musical thought.

Within its first three tracks, the album has already travelled from Bud Powell’s bebop architecture to Broadway lyricism and blues-rooted swing. The sequence demonstrates why the piano trio has remained one of jazz’s most enduring formats. The instruments may stay the same, but the personality of the pianist changes everything.

The fourth performance delivers the album’s first major surprise. The Rachel Z Trio interprets Sting’s “Fragile,” bringing a modern pop composition into an acoustic jazz setting. The familiar song is stripped of its original production and reconstructed through piano, bass and drums. Without Sting’s voice or guitar, the melody must stand independently, and the trio discovers a quieter emotional tension within it.

“Fragile” also reflects a broader Venus Records philosophy. The label’s catalogue frequently allows jazz musicians to approach material from film music, popular song, classical repertoire and contemporary songwriting. The result is often accessible without becoming superficial. Familiar melodies provide an entrance, but improvisation leads the listener somewhere less predictable.

The Roma Trio follows with Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things.” The song has passed through countless jazz interpretations, yet it remains an ideal test of a trio’s rhythmic character. Porter’s sophisticated melody gives musicians room to swing, accelerate and reshape the composition without losing its identity. In the hands of the Roma Trio, the standard contributes a distinctly European voice to an album that moves freely across national borders.

That international character becomes even clearer with Czech pianist Emil Viklický and his composition “Double Moon.” Unlike the standards surrounding it, “Double Moon” comes directly from the featured pianist. The track brings a more personal compositional language into the programme, widening the album beyond familiar American repertoire. It reminds the listener that the jazz piano trio is no longer tied to one city, country or tradition. It has become an international form through which musicians can express local influences and individual histories.

The centre of the album arrives with the Richie Beirach Trio performing “Flamenco Sketches,” the modal composition credited to Miles Davis and Bill Evans. It is music built not around aggressive speed but around atmosphere, harmonic colour and patience. Beirach is particularly suited to this territory. His playing often explores the space between jazz improvisation and classical harmony, and “Flamenco Sketches” gives the trio room to work with silence as carefully as it works with sound.

On a revealing stereo system, this kind of performance can become especially absorbing. The decay of the piano notes, the resonance of the double bass and the shimmer of the cymbals contribute to the emotional effect. The high-resolution SACD presentation does not need to turn the musicians into oversized objects in the listening room. Its real value lies in preserving the small details of interaction: a bass response beneath a piano phrase, a drummer changing the texture or a pause that becomes as meaningful as the notes around it.

The album continues with the Denny Zeitlin Trio and “As Long as There’s Music.” The title could almost serve as a statement of purpose for the entire collection. Zeitlin is a pianist known for intellectual curiosity and harmonic exploration, but the performance remains connected to melody. It is another example of how the Venus compilation balances accessibility with musical depth.

The Stanley Cowell Trio brings a different weight to George Gershwin’s “But Not for Me.” Cowell’s playing can sound elegant and forceful at the same time, and the Gershwin standard gives him a structure familiar enough to reveal the individuality of his touch. The song’s romantic disappointment acquires a harder rhythmic edge, turning polished Broadway material into something more direct and personal.

From there, the album enters one of its darkest spaces with the Jacky Terrasson Jazz Trio performing “Nardis.” Although the composition is credited to Miles Davis, it became strongly associated with Bill Evans, whose repeated performances revealed its mysterious harmonic possibilities. Terrasson approaches the piece from his own angle, allowing its tension to remain unresolved. The result is less a comfortable standard than a musical landscape in which the trio must continually decide where to step next.

Richard Wyands then restores a sense of classic songbook elegance with “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was.” The Rodgers and Hart composition has everything a jazz musician could want: a memorable melody, emotional ambiguity and harmonic movement that invites reinterpretation. The Richard Wyands Trio handles it with understated authority, demonstrating that sophistication does not require unnecessary decoration.

The transition to the Fred Hersch Trio is especially effective. Hersch performs Henry Mancini’s “Two for the Road,” a composition shaped by memory, intimacy and the passing of time. His approach allows the melody to unfold slowly, as though the musicians are remembering rather than simply performing the song. It becomes one of the album’s most quietly cinematic moments.

That reflective mood continues with the Spirits Trio and “Blame It on My Youth.” The Oscar Levant composition is one of the great confessional ballads in the jazz repertoire. Without lyrics, the trio must communicate regret through touch, pacing and harmony. The performance shows why ballads are among the most revealing tests of a pianist. Speed can create excitement, but slow music exposes every decision.

Near the end of the journey, the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio performs Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek.” Yamamoto is widely associated with recordings that combine strong rhythmic presence with audiophile appeal, and this track brings renewed warmth and swing after the inward-looking ballads. The familiar melody carries the elegance of an earlier era, yet the trio gives it enough rhythmic life to avoid nostalgia.

The final word belongs to the Hideaki Yoshioka Trio with Henry Mancini’s “Moment to Moment.” It is an appropriately named closing performance. Throughout the album, the listener has heard 15 groups working with the same basic instrumental structure, yet no two moments have sounded identical. Each trio has defined its own balance between melody and improvisation, discipline and freedom, intimacy and power.

The compilation was produced, mixed and mastered by Venus Records founder and producer Tetsuo Hara, using the label’s Venus Hyper Magnum Sound Direct Mix presentation. That production style is closely connected to the label’s reputation among audiophile jazz collectors. Rather than placing the listener at a distant seat in a concert hall, many Venus recordings create a more immediate perspective, emphasising the physical character of the piano, the wooden resonance of the bass and the impact of the drums.

The Japanese physical release is a single-layer stereo SACD, meaning it requires an SACD-compatible player and cannot be played in an ordinary CD-only machine. Its listed UPC is 4571292517508. For collectors, that technical detail matters. This is not a hybrid disc containing a conventional CD layer, but a dedicated Super Audio CD release designed for high-resolution playback.

Nevertheless, the strongest reason to hear Venus – The Amazing Super Audio CD Sampler Vol. 9 is not its format. Audio quality may attract the listener, but the performances give the album lasting value. The collection brings David Hazeltine, Kenny Barron, Barry Harris, Rachel Z, Richie Beirach, Denny Zeitlin, Stanley Cowell, Fred Hersch, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto and other distinctive pianists into one carefully arranged narrative. The official sequence contains 15 performances, moving from “Cleopatra’s Dream” to “Moment to Moment” without repeating a trio.

For listeners discovering the Venus Records catalogue, the album functions as an unusually generous introduction. For experienced jazz collectors, it offers the pleasure of hearing familiar musicians placed beside artists they may know less well. For audiophiles, it provides a wide range of piano tones, bass textures, cymbal colours and recording perspectives through which to evaluate a high-quality sound system.

But when the lights are low and the system is working properly, the analytical listening eventually falls away. The equipment disappears, the catalogue numbers lose their importance, and only the conversation remains: piano speaking to bass, bass answering the drums and three musicians deciding, moment by moment, where the music should go next.

That is the real achievement of The Amazing Super Audio CD Sampler Vol. 9. It begins as an audiophile jazz compilation and ends as a portrait of the piano trio itself—compact in size, limitless in expression and still capable of making three instruments sound like an entire world.