Bill Evans - Evans In England

By Marc Myers at JazzWax
The year 1969 was a busy one for pianist Bill Evans. In January and March, Evans with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Marty Morell recorded What's New with flutist Jeremy Steig. In February, the trio was recorded furtively at New York's Village Vanguard (The Secret Sessions). Then they moved on to Holland in March (Live In Hilversum 1969) and Italy in July (Autumn Leaves). Back in New York in early November, Evans began recording From Left to Right, his moody Fender Rhodes-acoustic piano album backed by an orchestra. Later that month, the trio recorded live in Copenhagen (Jazzhouse) and Amsterdam (Quiet Now).
Finally, on December 1, the Bill Evans Trio opened at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London, a run that would last until December 27. At various points during the month, the gig was beautifully recorded. The music captured Bill at his gentle and poetic best, a throwback to his playing of several years earlier. The recording has just been released on Evans in England (Resonance). Like the Wes Montgomery set that I reviewed yesterday, this two-CD set with a 36- page booklet of liner notes and interviews was produced by Zev Feldman.
According to Zev's introductory essay, the tapes were in the possession of a friend of Leon Terjanian, a resident of Strasbourg, France, who is among the world's many “trench coat" tape collectors. These fans own rare and previously unreleased recordings of major artists and trade them among each other. Zev traveled to Strasbourg twice to meet with Terjanian and to hear the tapes, research them and negotiate for their release. Terjanian would befriend Evans and film him in Lyon in 1978, using footage in his film, Turn Out the Stars, which was screened just once at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 1981.
As Zev was preparing Evans in England, he reached out to me for the album's main liner notes. To ensure that Evans was actually at Ronnie Scott's in December 1969, I called the club in London to verify the dates. They weren't sure, since their records were incomplete. So I went off to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at Lincoln Center, one of the finest arts research facilities in the city.
After an hour on the microfilm projector scrolling through the 1969 Melody Maker, the British music tabloid that published from 1926 to 2000, I found ads for the Bill Evans Trio at Ronnie Scott's throughout December.
For the notes, I also interviewed Marty Morell, my favorite Bill Evans drummer. I love Marty's delicate but determined touch and how he plays in and around Evans. After listening to the tapes, Marty said, he was certain the music was recorded in December 1969. During that visit to London, Marty recalled, he agreed to endorse Paiste cymbals, a Swiss company. Midway through the Ronnie Scott's run, he said, he switched out his Zildjian cymbal for a Paiste “Free Ride"—a cymbal without a bell.The model let him ride the cymbal without overshadowing Evans's playing, something that Evans's mother had groused about months earlier in Washington, D.C.
The final mind-blower that emerged from my research for these notes was the origin of Elsa. Composed by Earl Zindars, the song was an Evans favorite and appears on numerous Evans albums over the years. The list includes Explorations, Trio '65, Paris 1965, Momentum, Live in Paris 1972, Re: Person I Knew, among others.
Despite going through the liner notes of these albums and thumbing through books, no one ever bothered to look into why Earl Zindars named the song Elsa. Who was this woman? I called Anne Zindars, the late composer's wife. Here's what she told me: “After Earl wrote the song, I asked him, 'So, who's Elsa?' Turns out the song was named for the lioness, Elsa, in the 1960 book, Born Free, which became a movie in '66. Earl loved the book when it came out."
I think you'll find that Evans in England is the finest live recording by this trio and easily in the top five by Evans in general. For me, it's bested only by Sunday at the Vangaurd/Waltz for Debbie recorded in 1961 and Bill Evans at Town Hall in 1966. As you'll hear, the music in London is alive and spry without Evans's keyboard agitation or complaint. All 18 tracks feature Evans at ease; Gomez conversational, not nagging; and Morell on sticks and brushes egging Evans along. We're lucky that such artistic grace surfaced and that Resonance producers Zev Feldman and George Klabin had the wisdom and determination to put the music out.
Bill Evans died in September 1980.

Another Time - The Hilversum Concert

Bill Evans - Another Time: The Hilversum Concert



By Fred Kaplan
Resonance Records is emerging as the most vital jazz reissue house around—or, rather, not "reissue," for the music they put out has never been issued before: the producer Zev Feldman (or someone who contacts him) has found it in an unexamined vault, back room, or collectors' cove. The material is top-flight, the sound very good to excellent, and he often releases the albums on CD and LP. So far he has delivered some of the best albums ever by Larry Young, Sarah Vaughan, Shirley Horn, and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, but Feldman holds a special regard for Bill Evans.
The final few years of Evans, who died in 1980 at age 51 of complications from drug addiction and other ailments, have been preserved entirely by posthumous discoveries: The Paris Concert (Elektra Musician), The Last Waltz and (Milestone), Turn Out the Stars (Nonesuch)—without these sunset gems, all live sessions, we'd think that Evans faded out with a string of dreary studio albums, some of them with electric piano. (For a sad but fascinating documentary of Evans' life and music, including many rare films clips, see Bruce Siegel's Time Remembered.)
Resonance is now filling in some blanks from Evans' middle years, the late 1960s, for which there's also a paucity of albums, or at least of very good ones. The best of the new stack is the latest, Another Time, recorded before a live audience in the studio of Netherlands Radio Union in Hilversum, outside Amsterdam, on June 22, 1968. Until this release, no one ever knew the tapes of this performance existed.
It is also one of just three albums featuring his trio with Eddie Gomez on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums—the others being The Montreux Concert (which was released by Verve at the time) and another Resonance discovery, put out two years ago, Some Other Time: The Lost Session in the Black Forest. The Hiversum set was the climax of the trio's three sessions we now know of—recorded two days after Some Other Time, five days after Montreux.
The Montreux Concert is widely considered one of Evans' best albums; some place it just behind his wondrous back-to-back 1961 sessions, Waltz for Debby and Sunday Afternoon at the Village Vanguard. I would put Another Time on the same level as Montreux, and the sound quality is nearly as good.
The Gomez-DeJohnette trio was by far his best since the '61 band with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, which was disrupted when LaFaro, 10 days after the Vanguard sets, died in a car accident, a tragedy from which Evans never quite recovered. (The '68 trio didn't last long either: soon after these sets, DeJohnette was recruited by Miles Davis; Gomez stayed on, but the subsequent drummers weren't quite as polyrhythmically sublime.) Evans himself, who'd dipped deeper into addiction after that event, is in fine form: elegiac, romantic, lyrical—all the adjectives usually attached to his pianism, but there's also a buoyancy and sometimes a fervent swing that his name doesn't so commonly evoke. And it's a joyous fervency, not the cocaine-fueled frenzy one hears on some of his last albums (eg, his 1980 Vanguard set, Turn Out the Stars).
Evans' most energetic albums seem to be the live ones. Some Other Time, the Resonance album recorded in a Black Forest studio, though mainly quite good, has passages of rote playing.
The sound quality on Another Time, the Hilversum concert (the similarity in titles is unfortunate), is superb on CD and better still on LP, unmatched by any other Evans albums except for Montreux and the better Riversides. Many years ago, the long-lamented Classic Records released an excellent limited-edition 45rpm remastering of Montreux, which sounded better than the original pressing; someone should think about a re-release.
Meanwhile, there's this, and Feldman tells me there are more excavated treasures to come.

Read more at:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/bill-evans-another-time-hilversum-concert#tQ5PCyzTSwo70cxI.99

Track Listing:
You're Gonna Hear from Me; Very Early; Who Can I Turn To?; Alfie; Embraceable You; Emily; Nardis; Turn Out the Stars; Five.
Personnel:
Bill Evans: piano; Eddie Gomez: bass; Jack DeJohnette: drums.

Bill Evans - Some Other Time: The Lost Sessions From The Black Forest

Some Other Time: The Lost Sessions From The Black Forest



By Mark Richardson Executive Editor
Some Other Time is a newly unearthed Bill Evans studio album, initially recorded in 1968 in Germany but not released until this month. It still sounds fresh and alive almost 50 years later.
Casual jazz fans know Bill Evans through his association with Miles Davis. Kind of Blue, the one jazz album you own if you only own one, features Evans on piano on four of the five tracks, and his brief liner notes sketch out the group's approach to improvisation in poetic and accessible terms. When you learn a bit more about Kind of Blue, you learn that Davis actually envisioned the record with Evans in mind. And though for years Davis was listed as the album's sole composer, Evans wrote "Blue in Green" (he eventually received credit.)
Another Kind of Blue piece, "Flamenco Sketches," was partly based on Evans' arrangement of "Some Other Time," the Leonard Bernstein standard. (Evans had earlier used the slow opening vamp as a building block to his breathtaking solo piano composition "Peace Piece"). So though he may not be an especially famous jazz musician, Bill Evans played an integral role in shaping the most famous jazz recording of all time, and the arc of his discography is a rewarding one for those branching off from classic Miles. "Some Other Time" continued to be a touchstone piece for Evans for the rest of his life, appearing regularly on his albums (notably on his duet record with Tony Bennett). And now it's become the title track to a newly unearthed studio album, one recorded in 1968 in Germany but not released until this month.
Jazz in general overflows with archival material. It's a live medium, and recordings of shows have been common since the early part of the last century. Studio LPs could typically be cut in a couple of days, which generally meant a wealth of unused songs and outtakes. But it's somewhat rare to have a true unreleased album—a collection of songs recorded together at a session with the thought of a specific release that never saw the light of day.
Some Other Time: The Lost Session From the Black Forest is one of these. It was recorded when Evans was on tour in Europe with a trio that included Eddie Gomez on bass and, on drums, a young Jack DeJohnette, who would go on to much greater fame with Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, and as a leader himself. It was cut between stops on a European tour by German producer Joachim-Ernst Berendt, with the idea that the rights and a release plan would be figured out later. This particular group had only been documented on record just once, on At the Montreux Jazz Festival, recorded five days prior to this date. So the existence of an unheard studio album by the trio is a significant addition to the Evans story.
The piano/bass/drums trio setting is where Evans did his most important and lasting work. He thrived on both the limitations and the possibilities of the set-up, and returned to it constantly over the course of his quarter-century recording career. He generally favored truly collaborative improvising in the setup; the bassist in his trio was expected to contribute melodically and harmonically, in addition to rhythmically, and he could often be heard soloing alongside the pianist. Eddie Gomez, heard on this album, was a steady partner of Evans' for a decade, and the level of empathy between the two players is something to behold. On "What Kind of Fool Am I?," Gomez's dancing lines darts between Evans' bass notes, almost serving as a third hand on the piano. On the immortal title track, Gomez seems like half a conversation, accenting and commenting on Evans' melodic flourishes. For his part, DeJohnette offers tasteful and low-key accompaniment, heavy on the brushwork and soft textures on cymbals—he was more of a role-player at this point in his career. But the three together feel like a true unit.
The tracklist on Some Other Time is heavy on standards, with a few Evans original sprinkled in. To love the American songbook is to be in love with harmony, and Evans never stopped discovering new possibilities in old and frequently played songs. He had a way of phrasing chord progressions for maximum impact, and he used space as virtually another instrument. Evans recorded "My Funny Valentine" many times in a number of different arrangements, often uptempo, but here he drags it out into an achingly poignant ballad that picks up speed as it goes. In his autobiography, Miles Davis famously described Evans' tone as sounding like "like crystal notes or sparkling water cascading down from some clear waterfall," and the tumble of notes on the faster sections of "My Funny Valentine" evince that crystalline loveliness. In addition to the material planned for the original LP, there's a second LP of outtakes and alternate versions that feels very much on par with the first disc.
Evans' art has endured in part because he has a brilliant combination of formal sophistication and accessibility; critics and his fellow musicians heard the genius in his approach to chords, his lightness of touch, and his open-eared support of others in his band, while listeners could put on his records and simply bask in their beauty, how Evans' continual foregrounding of emotion made the sad songs extra wrenching and the happy ones extra buoyant. He was sometimes criticized for an approach that could sound like "cocktail piano," meaning that it wasn't terribly heavy on dynamics and tended to be lower key and generally pretty, but this turned out to be another strength. If you wanted jazz in the background while engaging in another activity, Evans was your man, and if you wanted to listen closely and hear a standard like "Some Other Time" pushed to the limits of expression by his ear for space, he was there for that too.
Evans was one of those jazz artists who changed relatively little over the course of their career. His style developed and his sound had subtle shifts in emphasis over time, but his general approach to music was remarkably consistent, and he remained apart from most of the fashionable trends that wound through the jazz of his era. His first studio date as a leader, in 1956, was just a year after Charlie Parker's death, with bebop very much still au courant; his last, in 1979, the year before his death, was the year Chuck Mangione was nominated for a Grammy for the discofied light jazz funk of "Feels So Good." In both of those years, Evans recorded small-group acoustic jazz albums featuring his standard trio, playing a mix of standards and a few originals. About midway between those two bookends came this set, recorded in a small studio in Germany and left on the shelf, and it still sounds fresh and alive almost 50 years later.

Bill Evans - The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 (The Vinyl Box Set)

By Concord Music Group 

Concord Music Group is proud to announce the forthcoming vinyl reissue of Bill Evans’ The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961, one of the greatest live jazz recording sessions of all time. Pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the four-LPs box set is packaged with a 12-page booklet, complete with new liner notes by reissue producer Bill Belmont, as well as the original liner notes by the producer of the initial recordings, Orrin Keepnews. Reproductions of Keepnews’ session annotations and photographer Steve Schapiro’s proof sheets from the performances add vintage context to the packaging. As a bonus, a stunning metallic and black poster of the famous cover—Evans, in profile, deep in concentration at his piano—completes the box set.

Ranked time after time as one of the best live jazz recording sessions in history, and yielding two of Evans’ most classic albums (Waltz for Debby, Sunday at the Village Vanguard),The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 represents the pinnacle of spontaneous musical communication: three men breathing as one on a tiny bandstand. The performances on these LPs demonstrate a new and more interactive approach to playing as a trio, one in which all instruments carry melodic responsibilities and function as equal voices. Keepnews recalls in his liner notes that “from the very first moments of the recording, it was impossible to ignore the importance of these performances.”

Everything Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro, and Paul Motian had been working on for the previous 18 months led to this moment on June 25, 1961. The little-known pianist and his trio performed afternoon and evening sets that Sunday to a small audience that unknowingly sat through what would become a very famous—and final—set by the trio (the 25-year old LeFaro died tragically in a car accident just days later). These recordings provide something of a sonic time capsule: sequenced in the original order of the five sets, the audience’s murmurings and applause are peppered throughout; even an interrupted take is left intact. Belmont recalls the process of piecing the performance back together during the remastering process: “As was the practice with early live recording, the songs [on the original album] were faded just after the last note, and much, if not all, of the audience and banter from the stage was removed. So the first stage of the process was to find the reels—if they existed—and try and make a reconstruction of everything that was recorded…The task was to try to make the show flow as closely as possible to what had been recorded.”

By Jeff Tamarkin at JazzTimes 

Concord Music Group is reissuing Bill Evans’ The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961, as a vinyl box set. Pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the four LPs are packaged with a 12-page booklet, complete with new liner notes by reissue producer Bill Belmont, as well as the original liner notes by the producer of the initial recordings, Orrin Keepnews. The set also includes reproductions of Keepnews’ session annotations and photographer Steve Schapiro’s proof sheets from the performances. As a bonus, according to a press release, a metallic and black poster of the album cover—Evans, in profile, deep in concentration at his piano—completes the box set.

The original recording was made June 25, 1961, at the New York venue and features pianist Evans with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian.

Concord also plans a 12-disc reissue of The Complete Riverside Recordings for early 2015. That set presents all 20 recording sessions from the eight-year period (1956-63) that launched Evans’ career. These 151 performances are presented in what’s described as “a sleek brick box,” along with a 32-page illustrated booklet. Due in January is the four-LP set The Complete Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Recordings, which encompasses the duets Bennett and Evans recorded in 1975 and 1976. New liner notes by music critic and co-author of Bennett’s autobiography, Will Friedwald, complete the package.

Track Listing for The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961:

Disc 1

Side A: 

1. Spoken Introduction 00:43 

2. Gloria's Step (Take 1, Interrupted) 5:41 

3. Alice In Wonderland (Take 1) 6:57

Side B: 

1. My Foolish Heart 4:55 

2. All Of You (Take 1) 8:14 

3. Announcement And Intermission 1:44

Disc 2

Side A: 

1. My Romance (Take 1) 7:11 

2. Some Other Time 5:02 

3. Solar 8:57

Side B: 

1. Gloria's Step (Take 2) 6:10 

2. My Man's Gone Now 6:21 

3. All Of You (Take 2) 8:29 

Disc 3

Side A: 

1. Detour Ahead (Take 1) 7:17 

2. Discussing Repertoire 00:31 

3. Waltz For Debby (Take 1) 6:46 

4. Alice In Wonderland (Take 2) 8:31

Side B: 

1. Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy) 6:09 

2. My Romance (Take 2) 7:26 

3. Milestones 6:31 

Disc 4

Side A: 

1. Detour Ahead (Take 2) 7:41

2. Gloria's Step (Take 3) 6:48 

3. Waltz For Debby (Take 2) 7:00 

Side B: 

1 All Of You (Take 3) 8:18 

2. Jade Visions (Take 1) 4:12 

3. Jade Visions (Take 2) 3:57 

4. ...A Few Final Bars 1:15

Martin Wind's Homage to Bill Evans

Martin Wind Quartet & Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana
Turn Out The Stars: Music Written or Inspired by Bill Evans



By Mark Corroto
Has an artist ever been characterized as a hopeful romantic? If not, then let us nominate Martin Wind, not as hopeless, but a bullish and inspiring romantic. His quartet and the 36- piece Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana tribute to pianist Bill Evans Turn Out The Stars marries his talents, both as a jazz bassist/bandleader and orchestral arranger.
Besides leading his own quartet, and working in trio with Bill Mays and Matt Wilson, and in the guitar/bass duos with Philip Catherine or Ulf Meyer, Wind is an in-demand sideman featured in multiple projects, including Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts and bands led by, Ted Nash, Gary Smulyan, and Pete Mills, to name just a few. He released two stellar recordings in 2013, the CD Ulf Meyer and Martin Wind At Orpheus Theater (Laika) and an audiophile LP Remember October 13th (Edition Longplay).
Recorded live at the Theatro Rossini in Pesaro, Italy, Wind's quartet includes his regular partners, saxophonist Scott Robinson and pianist Bill Cunliffe, plus drummer Joe LaBarbera, who was Bill Evans' drummer in the pianist's final trio (1978-1980). This homage to Evans is enhanced by the gorgeous and passionate arrangements Wind wrote for conductor Massimo Morganti's orchestra. The disc opens with the title track, an overture in full bloom that gives way to the quartet's recitation of melody with Robinson's saxophone laying down velvety notes. Each piece— such as the spry rendition of "The Days Of Wine And Roses," performed by the quartet or full orchestra—is dexterously accomplished. Wind has the knack for extracting the sweetest juice for each piece written by Evans or written in tribute to the great one. La Barbera's composition "Kind Of Bill" opens with a piano and bowed bass duo, then lingers in that romantic atmosphere Evans loved to reach for.
Even in full orchestra, the quartet is never overwhelmed. The luscious arrangement of "Blue In Green" plays off of the contrasts of lightness and dark, the orchestra a pastoral landscape for the quartet to rollick. The tricky "Twelve Tone Tune Two" pushes the orchestra into a challenging interchange with La Barbera's drums and the coughing horn of Robinson. At the center of this gorgeous evening is the stalwart bass of Wind, the infrastructure upon which both a quartet and a very large orchestra is held by his passionate zeal.
Track Listing:
Turn Out The Stars; My Foolish Heart; The Days Of Wine And Roses; Jeremy; Memory Of Scotty; Kind Of Bill; Blue In Green; Twelve Tone Tune Two; Goodbye Mr. Evans.
Personnel:
Martin Wind: bass; Scott Robinson: tenor saxophone, C melody saxophone; Bill Cunliffe: piano; Joe La Barbera: drums; Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana - Massimo Morganti: conductor.

Bill Evans Trio - LeJazz/Charly From the 90's

Bill Evans

Serenity



Bill Evans envisioned a piano trio in which the bassist and drummer wouldn’t be accompanists but equal participants. Further, without any attempts at obvious fusion, he melded elements of late 19th- and early 20th-century classical music into his approach, along with a quiet but powerful lyrical quality still based in jazz. SERENITY captures a live Evans radio broadcast with his regular bandmates from the early and mid-‘70s--Eddie Gomez (bass) and Marty Morell (drums)--performing Evans's best-loved favorites such as "Re: Person I Knew" and "Waltz For Debby."


The Bill Evans Trio

Quiet Now



By Stewart Mason
An aptly titled album from the Bill Evans Trio, Quiet Now is the jazz pianist at his most ambient and cerebral. Accompanied only by the minimalist rhythm section of bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Marty Morell, Evans effortlessly deconstructs two pop standards, Harold Arlen's "Sleeping Bee" and his beloved "Autumn Leaves," a Johnny Mercer tune that he played seemingly hundreds of times, along with three of his own compositions and Miles Davis' "Nardis," a song Evans made his own through endless reintepretation over the course of many years. Morrel is a steady, unobtrusive drummer with a light touch and, happily, not much of a tendency to show off and even less to solo. Gomez, the bassist Evans worked with the longest in his career, knows how to anticipate his boss' every move, no matter how seemingly random, and his solo spots are those rarities, economical and well-constructed bass solos that are actually fun to listen to. Quiet Now is a bit too workmanlike to be one of the greatest Bill Evans Trio releases -- it's more solidly competent than divinely inspired, but Evans' playing, as always, is marvelous.

BILLBEATLES

By Claudio Botelho
They’re two different entities, but equally enticing in remaining far and above their peers. They’ve transcended their gender for long and seriously stretched their proposed boundaries into other realms, and the passing of time has only made they garner more recognition.
Bill Evans was more erudite, at least at the delivery for consumption. The Beatles’ music was purposely done to younger and wider audiences, and both musical legacies have acquired an uncanny transcendence by achieving a timeless reputation of unsurpassed quality.
These two phenomena of our time are unique. No rock band (was the Beatles a rock band?) or piano trio were ever like them, even at a glance.
When the Beatles came out, I was already irreversibly committed to jazz. I started with Dave Brubeck and Oscar Peterson, and Bill Evans wasn't yet in my foreseeable future, but this alone was all I needed to be away from that British group or any other of its kind whatsoever.
But how could I overlook their ubiquitous presence? It was an impossible mission, for the simple reason they were everywhere. As a natural consequence, they were just present in my life, but I wasn’t a repository of any of their influences, or so thought I. If their music were ever listened attentively by me, it was through the good services of jazz musicians (Ramsey Lewis comes to my mind). Otherwise, their tunes would pass me unnoticed, as much as, to be truthful, any other kind of music was it popular or classic. I was already very hooked to the jazz language.
Until the arrival of the album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely hearts Club Band”, The Beatles were just one more pop musical group among many others for me. But then, all of a sudden, I was embedded in songs like “With a Little Help from my Friends”, “Getting Better”, “She’s Leaving Home”, “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, “Lovely Rita”, “Good Morning, Good Morning”, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, the fantastic impressionist arranged “A Day in the Life” and five others. I was taken aback; shocked I was!... I surely didn’t know that, music wise, what inside that production was out of the reach of John, Paul, George and Ringo or even of the fifth Beatle, but I gathered I was in front of something seriously BIG!
Besides being in front of a musical presentation as dissimilar as any I had ever heard so far, I couldn't find any link between the compositions as if they were done by entirely different minds! Each one had a richness all its own and, so, seemed unique to me. By that time, I was halfway in my teens and the “needle” of my case-type monaural Philips disk player was worn out playing that masterpiece.
Keep to you this: Sgt. Pepper’s was the first and the last album of its kind I've ever brought home to listen to…
Bill Evans. To start with, he was responsible for bringing people from the kitchen to the living room. So, bassists and drummers are now on par with sax, trumpet and piano players. His 1961 trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian was the starting point. I don’t know the extent of the role of Lafaro’s exquisite playing: he certainly wasn’t a common bass player and the way he treated his instrument needed more space to bloom. Was Evans’ brain the one behind this revolution or was he simply an attentive witness to a phenomenon which needed to follow its course? Did he, keenly, spot the enhancement LaFaro’s performance could bring to his group and to his music altogether and, then, just put it to work?
Certainly, a no-leader-three-leader group would become much stronger, provided it had some kind of invisible guide to put everything together. Evans leadership spoke through his enormous musical talent, no matter how well mannered he was as a human being: never authoritative, but an authority himself.
Surely, that “three-leadership-group” of his and its inherent symbiosis brought about the best of everybody. His cohorts have become much more part of the whole than ever before… (Some utilitarianism was welcome here…)
Of course, to be the first to achieve this would imply having a personal character of a certain kind; it should be honest enough to give more ground to his partners and not be afraid of losing relevance. Some humbleness was required here; a thing geniuses are commendably known to have. …
Was it the way things went by? I don’t know. Maybe, about this I’m the most ignorant man around…
What I know is that his trio was the beginning of a new trend which has reigned ever since. Wasn’t Evans such a formidable talent, this alone would have been enough to put his name in the top echelon of jazz.
About him, there’s not anything new I can address; everything has been said about this giant, so… (I’ve heard that Alain Broadbent, when listening to him for the first time, busted into tears and decided to follow his steps).
Since his early passing, we’ve been trying to find someone who could fill, at least partly, the enormous gap he left behind to fulfill our needs. From then on, we’ve examined people like Fred Hersch, Enrico Pierannunzi, Lynne Arriale, Alan Broadbent, Bill Charlap, Tord Gustavsen, Roland Hanna, Eddie Higgins, Hank jones, Andy Laverne, Bobo Stenson, Bill Mays, Walter Norris, Alan Pasqua, Gonzalo Rubalcalba…
Do you know what? Heeeeeeeeelp!... The gap remains unfulfilled, and there’s nothing on the horizon to show otherwise.
But, alas, BillBeatles? Why is this?
All this is just to say these are two musical entities which I feel will never be superseded, no matter how things evolve, no matter what progress man can bring to this divine art named music. This is the proof of the existence of something which can’t be smelled, viewed or touched; something science will never explain, which is well beyond any dissection ever to be tried…