" data-original-title="" title="">Hasaan Ibn Ali's Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album (Omnivore, 2019) was a revelation to be sure, but Retrospect In Retirement of Delay: The Solo Recordings is even more illuminating. At least the aforementioned studio recordings had some precedent in the form of The Max Roach Trio Featuring The Legendary Hasaan (Atlantic, 1965). But this is a collection of previously unreleased solo tracks where the late pianist, situated in some more informal settings, lets his mind and hands roam free (along with his voice on "Extemporaneous Prose-Poem"), thus conjuring both the fanciful and the contemplative in equal measure.

Virtually without interruption or interference, the two CDs reveal the eccentric beauty of the Philadelphia native's piano work. Its title taken from a personal letter written by the artist (one of his many idiosyncrasies), the twenty-one track compendium curated by scholar/fans Alan Sukoenig and Lewis Porter along with the label's mainstay Cheryl Pawelski document a time in the early sixties when this iconoclastic pianist was busy only under the proverbial radar in his hometown of Philadelphia. And yet Ali was prolific in his own sweet way when he sat down at the piano, as much on his choices of standards as on his spontaneous and previously-composed material.

A pianist of some renown himself,