Alain Rieder & Frank Gambale – Jazz-in Concert, Zurich 1992

During the summer of 1988, I had the pleasure of meeting Frank Gambale at a series of seminars in southern France, in Montpellier and Antibes, where we were both participating as instructors.

Our first meeting had actually taken place earlier at the Montreux Festival, where we had performed together at the Casino club with a band assembled especially for the occasion.

During the two weeks of seminars, we had plenty of time to get to know each other, jam together, and even perform on the stage of the Antibes Juan-les-Pins Festival as part of a concert featuring the seminar instructors.

I met up with Frank again in Los Angeles in 1989, but it was in 1990 or 1991, after a concert in Chambéry where I had gone to see him perform with the Chick Corea Elektric Band, that I met the producer of the television program Jazz-in Concert. Since the show often brought together European and American musicians, and while we were talking at the hotel bar after the concert, it occurred to me to suggest a program featuring Frank and myself. Frank immediately agreed, and the show was eventually recorded in late spring 1992.