Although harmonica has been a pillar of blues and folk music, it never found great favor in jazz. Enrico Granafei, a protégé of pioneering harmonicat Toots Thielemans, hopes to raise the humble instrument’s stature among jazz lovers. The Italian-born U.S. resident blows sweet and romantic, and raises the tempo if faster rhythms call on his chromatic harmonica. Granafei plays the instrument from a rack (like folk singers since Woody Guthrie) and a DB guitar-bass, but his one-man trio is augmented by a crack combo, wrapping his solos in cool jazz.
