Skip Wilkins may only partly spend his time in the Delaware Water Gap, PA as he also lives in Central Europe. But he’s not just a regular presence at the Water Gap’s storied Deer Head Inn, the site of live recordings from Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Paul Motian, to Phil Woods, to Jim Snidero — Wilkins actually lives at the Deer Head.

The Deer Head is just the spectacular pianist and composer’s epicenter, though; no matter where Wilkins has treaded, he’s performed with some of the unquestionable greats of jazz, from Stanley Turrentine to Clark Terry to Dave Liebman and beyond.

Now, Wilkins has a new trio album, In Morava (Na Moravě), due out in the fall of 2023. Featuring longtime friends and colleagues in bassist Josef Fečo and drummer Tomáš Hobzek, In Morava (Na Moravě) is a moving tribute to Wilkins’s extensive travels on both sides of the pond, and the close associates the pianist has made along the way.

These include the Czech tenor saxophonist Rostislav Fraš, who guested on three cuts (two takes of “Kája,” as well as “Really” (“Fakt”) before his untimely 2019 passing after a long battle with a brain tumor. He was only 44. “Rost’a died before he ever heard this recording,” Wilkins says of the late great of jazz. “The album is dedicated to him.”

1. My Beautiful Stranger
2. Nearly Good Wine
3. My Czech Family (Moje ceska rodina)
4. Where Are You Going, Frank (Franto, kam jdes)
5. Kaja (take two)
6. In Morava (Na Moravě)
7. Bohunka’s Cakes (Bohunciny kolace)
8. Really (Fakt)
9. Kaja (take one)
10. Threads

This blissfully elegant new recording opens on the emotionally capricious My Beautiful Stranger and the mesmerizing bebop tune Nearly Good Wine and then proceeds to brings us the thoroughness of the sweeping waltz My Czech Family (Moje ceska rodina), the switched up Where Are You Going, Frank (Franto, kam jdes) and then we get brought forth the impassioned Kaja (take two).

Along next is the harmoniously expansive, titular In Morava (Na Moravě) and the yet another waltz, this time the dutiful Bohunka’s Cakes (Bohunciny kolace; and of which is itself an homage to a friend of theirs who used to make them cakes), and they are in turn followed seamlessly by the organic nature of Really (Fakt), the album rounding out on the rhythmically emboldened Kaja (take one), closing on the melodious Threads.

In closing, and throughout In Morava, Wilkins proves himself to be a beautiful singer, even if just mostly through his heart, mind and hands, it really doesn’t matter as he has given us an album that reinvigorates our desire to fall in love with impassioned music all over again.

Official Website