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℗ Cobert Edizioni
Piano: BILLY LESTER
Bass: MARCELLO TESTA
Drums: NICOLA STRANIERI
Album Review: HIGH STANDARDS (The Billy Lester Trio)
by TONY FRANKEL on JULY 29, 2025 in CD-DVD
STANDARDS, UNSTANDARDIZED
With High Standards, pianist Billy Lester reminds us that reinvention isn’t just possible in jazz — it’s the point. You may not need high standards to listen to this joy-filled album, but you will certainly have high standards after! Joined by bassist Marcello Testa and drummer Nicola Stranieri, Lester plunges into the American songbook not to pay homage but to interrogate it, dismantle it, and rebuild it on his own terms. This is no polite stroll through familiar melodies. Instead, each track becomes a high-wire act of improvisation, exhilarating in its spontaneity and fearless in its abstraction.
Listeners familiar with Lester’s lineage — he was a protégé of Sal Mosca, and by extension Lennie Tristano — will recognize the deep commitment to improvisation that’s less about showing off and more about searching. Here, standards like “There Will Never Be Another You” and “Just Friends” are pushed to their harmonic edges. The melodies are not introduced outright, so those who don’t know the original standards should listen intently — phrases float in and out, sometimes emerging like fragments in a dream, sometimes vanishing altogether beneath a driving, unpredictable pulse.
“What Is This Thing Called Love” becomes a noirish riddle, cloaked in uncertainty and tension. “You Go to My Head” isn’t a wistful ballad but a slow-motion reverie — hypnotic, exploratory, and emotionally raw. Even uptempo burners like “I’ll Remember April” and “Lover, Come Back to Me” are given fresh life through daring phrasing, rhythmic displacement, and harmonic curveballs that feel less like departures and more like alternative routes through the tune’s DNA.
The rhythm section, far from just keeping time, is an equal partner in the adventure. Testa and Stranieri are nimble, intuitive, and unshakable — able to follow Lester through any turn without losing momentum or clarity. Together, the trio creates music that feels like a conversation mid-thought, fluid and unfinished in the best sense.
The album’s final track is pure Lester: a free improvisation that feels at once composed and entirely of the moment. It’s a fitting close to a record that never settles for the obvious. For newcomers, High Standards is a perfect entry point into Lester’s singular style. For longtime listeners, it’s another chapter in the career of a pianist who refuses to play it safe—and is all the more exciting for it.
★★★★★ (Highly Recommended)
https://stageandcinema.com/2025/07/29/billy-lester-trio-high-standards/
The Billy Lester Trio: High Standards
By Pierre Giroux
September 12, 2025
With The Billy Lester Trio pianist Billy Lester offers a thrilling new chapter in his decades-long exploration of melodic abstraction and rhythmic vitality. Joined by bassist Marcello Testa and drummer Nicola Stranieri, Lester delivers a set that is as spontaneous, virtuosic, and inventive as any in his discography. For those unfamiliar with his music, this album serves as a perfect introduction, capturing the magic of his off-the-cuff ingenuity while reaffirming his singular voice in the jazz piano tradition.
With a program of well-worn popular and jazz standards, Lester and company breathe extraordinary new life into each piece, constructing performances that are abstract yet grounded, cerebral yet swinging. The album opens with a brisk rendition of "There Will Never Be Another You," performed at a bright tempo with a propulsive, forward-driving swing. Lester dances above the rhythm section, outlining fragments of the melody in unexpected intervals. Testa and Stranieri are fully integrated, pushing and pulling in real time. "Somebody Loves Me" starts familiarly but quickly veers into unexpected territory. Lester stretches the melody nearly to the breaking point, reassembling it in fresh angular lines. The trio is fearless in its deconstruction, yet anchored in deep musical trust. A standout is "What Is This Thing Called Love." This is a brooding, almost noir-like piece where the trio explores space and ambiguity. Lester's use of dissonance and suspended phrasing captures the tune's emotional complexity. Bassist Testa takes an extended solo turn where he develops his ideas organically, conveying a sense of forward motion.
To read the full review, please visit https://www.allaboutjazz.com/high-standards-the-billy-lester-trio-ultra-sound-records
TOM HENRY
The Blade
HIGH STANDARDS
Billy Lester Trio. Ultra Sound Records.
This disc that was released on Friday features the great pianist Billy Lester when he did a set of reinterpreted jazz standards in 2017.
Eight of the nine songs are with his trio, which includes Marcello Testa on bass and Nicola Stranieri on drums.
The ninth, “Free Improvisation,” is all Lester, in which he cuts loose for 9:28 minutes on a solo that is graceful and imaginative while performed at a somewhat frenetic pace.
The eight songs he does with his trio include works by Cole Porter, Oscar Hammerstein, Mack Gordon, and Haven Gillespie, but it’s not by any means a greatest hits collection by jazz superstars. It’s an interesting collection of lesser-known standards, with a nod to composers of yesteryear.
While Lester stays true to the form of such works, allowing some to be recognizable, he also offers a hefty dose of his own vision for them as remakes, usually in a more uptempo way. It’s a pretty creative project, intense as far as complexity goes but often with a light and illuminating touch.
One of the many standout solos includes Stranieri’s extended drum solo on “Lover, Come Back to Me.”
Lester, 79, began playing piano when he was 4 and was performing in public at 15. He has recorded 10 albums and is best known for his improvisation.
First Published September 18, 2025, 7:18 a.m.
Billy Lester: High Standards
By Richard J Salvucci
September 18, 2025
This is a very difficult recording to evaluate. If Billy Lester is living in Italy, the Italians are lucky. Someone has to be beyond sophisticated to pull off what Lester has done. He has, in essence, taken the GAS (Great American Songbook) and, with perhaps one exception, has improvised to the chord changes over the tunes. Imaginatively. Very imaginatively. Unfortunately, it really takes a pretty deep knowledge of music theory to appreciate what Lester has done. But if you have ever listened to Tom Harrell do something similar over "rhythm changes," the results are remarkable. Most of the time, folks with ordinary ears could not have told you what Harrell was doing. Oh, sure, perhaps someone can listen to "Donna Lee" or "Groovin' High," and hum the tune to which they are contrafacts. Really, that is no great accomplishment. Lester and Harrell are doing something of a completely different order.
To read the full review, please visit https://www.allaboutjazz.com/high-standards-billy-lester-ultra-sound-records
Billy Lester Trio Presents “High Standards”
By Skope / September 29, 2025
The Great American Songbook is a comfort zone for jazz performers and audiences alike. These are tunes we know by heart, familiar melodies that tug at nostalgia while providing a canvas for improvisation. For veteran pianist Billy Lester, however, standards are anything but safe territory.
Recorded in collaboration with bassist Marcello Testa and drummer Nicola Stranieri, the Billy Lester trio’s latest album, “High Standards,” radically reinvents nine classic jazz standards. Lester not only strips these songs down to their bones, but rebuilds them into something daring, unpredictable, and intensely personal.
The setlist reads like a classic jam session. Opening with “There Will Never Be Another You,” the album ventures into upbeat territory, with Lester dancing through complex solos. The original melody is not presented directly, with the theme being explored in fragmented phrases instead.
“What Is This Thing Called Love?” contrasts nicely with the other early entries, bringing a noir vibe to the album. Meanwhile, “Out of Nowhere” stands out as a single that thrives on dissonance. For the unprepared ear, this can be disorienting, but that’s precisely the point: Lester isn’t decorating standards, he’s deconstructing them.
The trio proves to be an inspired match. Testa and Stranieri don’t just accompany; they listen and create space for Lester’s direction. Their understated propulsion on the virtuosic I’ll Remember April turns the tune into a tightrope act, with the pianist bending time and harmony in ways that keep the listener perpetually on edge.
High Standards highlights the boldness and conversational interplay of the Billy Lester trio. Lester delivers a radical reclamation of the Songbook as a living, malleable art form, and his vision may just fly over the head of a casual listener. But for those willing to lean in, it is an absorbing listen.
https://skopemag.com/2025/09/29/billy-lester-trio-presents-high-standards