Jazz is a music that celebrates its mavericks and Bari’s Livio Minafra is certainly in that category. This important new voice in European jazz has come up under the tutelage of his father, the Italian jazz patriarch and leader of Orchestra Instabile Pino Minafra, but this Mediterranean extrovert is an independent thinker that has already amassed an impressive body of solo work. Minafra is an uninhibited pianist, alive to all the sonic possibilities that solo piano offers, from fragile intimacy to broad orchestral sweep. Endowed with a sensitive touch, expressive lyricism and rhythmic drive, on a given night his uninhibited approach embraces everything from pretty children’s songs to turbulent free improvisations. Solo piano asks for the highest levels of musical commitment, and Livio Minafra wears these demands lightly.