Tag: billevans

Kronos Quartet, Music of Bill Evans

Album of the Week, March 4, 2023

Over the albums of the past few weeks we’ve listened to the Bill Evans Trio play an assortment of covers and original Evans compositions. Today’s record pays tribute to Evans the composer—with help from of his collaborators—in an unusual form: the string quartet.

Violinist David Harrington formed the Kronos Quartet in Seattle in 1973, but soon relocated to San Francisco and the classic line-up—John Sherba on second violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Jean Jeanrenaud on cello—was in place by 1978. The group focused on modern repertoire but did not limit itself to classical music, and its second major label release was 1985’s Monk Suite: Kronos Quartet Plays Music of Thelonious Monk, featuring arrangements by Tom Darter and guest appearances by Ron Carter and Chuck Israels on bass. The album was a surprise hit, and the group followed it in 1986 with Music of Bill Evans, which also featured arrangements by Darter and guest appearances by Eddie Gómez and by guitarist Jim Hall. In another connection to Evans, the record was produced by Riverside Records founder Orrin Keepnews.

The arrangements throughout begin as transcriptions of the original trio performances, then branch out to add some solo opportunities for members of the quartet and their guests. The solos by Gómez on “Waltz for Debby” and “Very Early” shine brilliantly in this context, with a bite and snap on the opening number and a meditative glow on the second. A little seems lost in translation in the string solos in “Debby,” though, where the tone feels a little like a hoedown. One thing the quartet gets right in the opening number, though, is the fluidity of the time in the chorus, with the first rendition coming across as a bouncy swing and the second as a time-shifted, smeary triple rhythm.

“Nardis” is a showcase for Gómez, who takes the opening solo with some ferocity. The intensity diminishes a little with the entrance of the violin solo, but overall it’s a fine rendition of the Miles/Evans classic, particularly the finale. “Re: Person I Knew” captures the shifting harmonic colors of the Evans classic (anagrammatically named for Keepnews), with Jeanrenaud’s cello ably providing the melodic and harmonic grounding originally provided by Chuck Israels’ bass. Of all the performances here, it translates best to the quartet form.

“Time Remembered” is an exploration of the harmonic depths of Evans’ ballad playing. Hearing the string parts, one is tempted to go back and listen to the original recordings and revel in the newly clarified harmonies and chords, which sometimes seem to pass by too quickly and unremarked-upon in the trio recordings.

Jim Hall joins the quartet for the next three works: “Walking Up,” “Turn Out the Stars,” and “Fire.” As Keepnews writes in the liner notes, the outer two works of this “mini-suite” “could help destroy the myth that Evans was merely a master of slow tempos”; though the performance of “Walking Up” does not reach the velocity that Evans reached in his short-lived quartet with Jack DeJohnette, the energy is there, especially when Hall’s guitar begins to explore the harmonic complexities of the tune. “Turn Out the Stars,” by contrast, is a deeply introspective work, made all the more poignant by Hall’s unaccompanied, spontaneous closing solo in memory of his friend.

“Peace Piece” closes the album. The quartet unhurriedly explores this great work by Evans that would later be mined by Miles Davis for “Flamenco Sketches,” with the second violin, viola and cello sketching the hypnotically repeating chords of the left hand and Harrington playing a transcription of Evans’ right hand. Here again in the string transcription, the brilliant strangeness of Evans’ harmonic senses shine more clearly, giving us a better appreciation for the genius of his conception.

Though the recording succeeds brilliantly both at illuminating Evans the composer and the performer, this would be the last of the Kronos albums to be devoted entirely to jazz. In subsequent albums they would lean into the contemporary repertoire for string quartets. We’ll hear a particularly notable performance from them next time.

You can listen to the album here:

Bill Evans, Montreux II

Album of the Week, February 25, 2023

It’s a little unfair to say that Bill Evans’ best albums were recorded in the 1960s. He had a productive decade in the 1970s, recording for Columbia, Milestone and Fantasy. But his most enduring compositions were written in the 1960s. We’ve already heard many of them; they continued to feature on the many live albums he recorded during the decade. Picking up a Bill Evans recording from the 1970s, therefore, the odds were that it was live and covered familiar ground… mostly.

Much of Evans’ creativity during these years, ultimately, was in his interpretation and in his song choices. Both elements are broadly on display in Montreux II, Evans’ second live recording from the Montreux Jazz Festival and his final recording for producer Creed Taylor, this time on Taylor’s own CTI label.

We’re going to hear a lot more about CTI in coming weeks (spoiler alert!), but in this early stage of evolution the label was a bright cross-section of straight ahead jazz, proto-jazz-funk, and some reasonably out-there avant-garde stuff. Consider that the first recorded artists in the CTI 6000 series included flautist Hubert Laws, Freddie Hubbard in an early jazz-funk masterpiece, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joe Farrell, and this Evans date. There is, however, very little of the hallmarks of the classic CTI period here – no big string section orchestrated by Don Sebesky, no jazz-funk, very little in the way of nods to popular music. There’s just the Bill Evans Trio, doing what they did best.

This incarnation of the trio saw Jack Dejohnette (who had left to join Miles following At the Montreux Jazz Festival) with drummer Marty Morell, who would work with Evans and bassist Eddie Gómez from 1968 to 1974. Morell brought steady support and a solid presence behind the kit; while his level of creativity was not as high as Dejohnette, his fills and statements were more assertive than those that Paul Motian, for instance, had brought to some of the earlier trio recordings.

The tone, overall, is jubilant. Evans was playing in an extroverted manner here (relatively speaking). Tempos are brighter and even the ballads have the hint of a smile at the corner of their mouths, metaphorically speaking. The repertoire, as noted above, is a combination of familiar Evans compositions (“Very Early,” “34 Skidoo,” “Peri’s Scope”), covers of well loved favorites (“How My Heart Sings,” “I Hear a Rhapsody,” “Israel”), and a surprise. Starting in the 1970s Evans began to turn toward modern pop songs for repertoire, and this record features a surprisingly tender cover of the 1966 Bacharach/David hit “Alfie.” The first half of the ballad is entirely Evans and Gómez, but Morell joins them for a rhythmically jubilant verse before the trio returns to the more contemplative tone of the opening, with Gómez’s bass providing propulsive energy under the melody. It serves as a blueprint for the whole album.

One of the saddest questions we must ask about Evans’ career is where he would be without his crippling heroin addiction. Unlike past addicts we’ve seen like Philly Joe Jones, John Coltrane, and others, Evans was always careful not to let his habit interfere with his performances or his studio work (except for one memorable occasion when he accidentally hit a nerve with the needle and had to play largely one-handed for a week), but it clearly became an escape for him, and one that was only replaced by cocaine or alcohol on the brief occasions when he managed to get off the drug, from the time he got hooked in 1958 to his death in 1980. It has been described as the “slowest suicide in history,” and there’s no doubt that it interfered with his compositional creativity. But throughout that incredible ear remained as the hallmark of this most sensitive pianist. And his work remains as an influential milestone on jazz, one that a variety of unlikely musicians would pay tribute to after his death. We’ll hear one of those recordings next time.

You can listen to the album here:

Bill Evans, At the Montreux Jazz Festival

Album of the Week, February 18, 2023

Bill Evans played in plenty of other formats than the piano trio. We first met him in this column as part of Miles Davis’ sextet. He also recorded with symphonic orchestra, backing up Herbie Mann and Don Eliott, and solo. But piano trio was by far his favorite configuration, and one can trace a lot of his development as a musician by listening to how his playing responds to changes of personnel in his trios over the years. We’ve heard some of those changes already, but none were more significant than the change of players heard on this recording.

Chuck Israels, who played bass in the trio off and on from 1962 to early 1966, was gone; his last recording (save a one-off 1975 date) with Evans was the 1966 Bill Evans at Town Hall concert. And Larry Bunker’s last recording with the trio was last week’s Trio ’65. In their places were two significant musicians who would play pivotal roles in Evans’ development.

Evans met bassist Eddie Gómez in 1966, when the latter was just 22 years old and recently graduated from Juilliard. The bassist would spend the next 11 years working with Evans, forming far and away the pianist’s longest lasting musical partnership. But Evans was to record with a rotating chair at drummer for several years, doing a few albums with Shelly Manne, another duo album with Jim Hall in the mode of Undercurrent, and a solo recording. Finally in 1968, Evans met the young drummer Jack DeJohnette, who was just coming off a celebrated stint as a member of Charles Lloyd’s quartet.

The galvanic impact that DeJohnette had on Evans’s sound can be heard from the opening tune, “One for Helen,” where the drummer’s sound seems to spur Evans to greater harmonic and rhythmic innovation. While the opening tempo and dynamic is already more extroverted than the performances on the preceding trio records, the excitement ratchets up another notch with the entrances of Gómez and DeJohnette. For one thing, the drummer’s fills are noticeable here, instead of genteelly blending in as did Motian’s, with small explosions on cymbal or snare bursting from the line from time to time. Gómez gets a lion’s share of the excitement, though, with a bass solo that manages to be both melodic and percussive at once. When Evans re-enters, he’s recharged, playing rhythmic variations back to back into the close of the tune.

“A Sleepin’ Bee” retains some of the introspective hush of the performance on Trio 64, but Gómez and DeJohnette enliven it with their first entrance. Gómez’s entrance neatly echoes the descending left hand line in the piano before taking voice with a countermelody, while DeJohnette drops bombs and underscores the melodic exploration with rolls, excursions on the tom, and other outbursts, all while keeping a proverbial eye on Evans. The bass solo in the back half of the track is a neat trick, being both fully metrically and harmonically aligned with Evans’ take on the tune while simultaneously opening up the sound world of the piece with different chord voicings.

Earl Zindars’ “Mother of Earl” is a quieter ballad, here given a somber introduction by Evans that gives way to a more deliberate statement of the melody, and an extended bass solo in triplets. DeJohnette’s drums are mostly limited here to atmosphere, with some gentle work on the cymbals throughout.

Where things really start to get into gear is “Nardis.” Composed by Miles, the tune found its way into Evans’ repertoire in 1958 while he was playing in Cannonball Adderley’s band. First appearing on a Bill Evans Trio record with 1961’s Explorations, it remained a highlight of his live shows for the rest of his career, and this performance is a key argument for why. The performance here ably represents the model that so many preceding and subsequent takes would follow: a “straight” reading of the chorus by the full band, followed by an extended solo, here given to Gómez. In the liner notes to the album, the bassist notes that he views his instrument as a horn, and the solo here bears that out as an extended meditation on the tune. Evans follows with his own solo, picking up the rhythmic drive of Gómez’s bass line, as splashes on the cymbals and rolls on the snare and tom pour kerosene on the fire. DeJohnette then gets his own solo and takes some of the fill devices into a free exploration of time and tonality, wringing new colors out of the drum kit and revising the melody in a sort of slow motion fog before roaring back in a blistering crash of cymbals. The band close out with a recapitulation of the melody, trying on four closing chords before running up the scale and into the applause of the audience.

“I Loves You, Porgy” finds Evans catching his proverbial breath, taking a solo exploration of the tune that is by turns introspective and extroverted. Starting about two minutes in, the free chordal explorations of the opening give way to a syncopated rhythm that seems to light up the keys under the pianist’s fingers, spurring an exploration of the tune in rhythm that lasts through most of the rest of the piece. The next track, “The Touch of Your Lips,” is in a similarly introspective mood until Gómez and DeJohnette rejoin about halfway through, when the temperature kicks up again.

“Embraceable You” is a solo feature for Gómez, who freely explores the colors and range of the bass with soft accompaniment from Evans and DeJohnette. Evoking by turns the sound of a Spanish guitar, a Miles Davis solo line, and the most swinging bass line ever played by Milt Hinton, the bassist plays a sweetly introspective version of the tune, ending with rapt applause from the Montreux festival crowd.

Evans’ version of “Someday My Prince Will Come” is far less wistful than the version we last heard from Miles’ group (with Wynton Kelly on piano). If Miles’s version is hopeful, Evans’ version is positively jubilant. Gómez takes an extended bass solo in the lower range of the instrument, and DeJohnette trades eights with Evans, until finally the band crashes through the finale and the festival crowd goes wild. Evans and company return for a romp through “Walkin’ Up” at a breakneck pace to close out, leaving the audience roaring for more.

DeJohnette wouldn’t stay long with Evans, despite the sound the trio developed (which won Evans his second Grammy award). He played with Stan Getz briefly in November 1968, and was performing with Getz’s group at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London that month when he was discovered by Miles Davis. He went on to Miles’ band, performing alongside bassist Dave Holland in what has been dubbed the “lost” quintet, since none of that line-up’s music ever made it onto a studio recording. As for Evans, he would continue in the trio format, and we’ll hear one more outing from his trio next time.

You can listen to the album here:

Bill Evans Trio, Trio ’65

Album of the Week, February 11, 2023

Bill Evans didn’t record much in 1964—he was too busy touring. Aside from a studio session with Stan Getz, Ron Carter (alternating with Richard Davis) and Elvin Jones, his only recorded output from the year was a session with singer Monica Zetterlund (appearing under her name as Waltz for Debby) and live sessions in California and Europe. None of those sessions included Gary Peacock, whose contributions to Evans’ catalog began and ended with Trio 64. Instead, Evans was back touring with Chuck Israels and a new drummer, Larry Bunker.

The new album, which like its predecessor was recorded in one session in New York City, on February 3, 1965, follows a similar format: all standards, no originals, and more than a few numbers that Evans had recorded before. As for the players, we’ve met Israels before; Bunker is new to this column, but not to jazz. He had one of the most varied careers of a jazz drummer ever, having appeared on records over the course of his career for (deep breath): Peggy Lee including Black Coffee, Buddy Collette, Stan Getz, Stan Kenton including A Merry Christmas!, Gary Burton, Chet Baker, Benny Carter, Clare Fischer, Woody Herman, Dizzy Gillespie, Plas Johnson, Johnny Mandel, Shelly Manne, Carmen McRae, Oliver Nelson, Paul Horn, Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers, Pete Rugolo, Bud Shank, Lalo Schifrin, Sarah Vaughan, Wendy Waldman, the Fifth Dimension including Stoned Soul Picnic, Tim Buckley on Sefronia, Linda Ronstadt, Michael Franks, Diane Schuur, Kenny Rogers, Walter Murphy, Barry Manilow, Michael Bolton, Natalie Cole, Al Jarreau, Diana Kraal, Cheryl Bentyne, Vince Gill, Robert Palmer, U2 (he is the timpani player on “Hawkmoon 269,” from Rattle & Hum), and Christina Aguilera, on My Kind of Christmas. A session drummer at heart, he nevertheless made six recordings with Evans, appearing on two Milestone sessions (Time Remembered and At Shelly’s Manne-Hole), the Zetterlund record, a live trio recording, and an odd session with symphony orchestra, in addition to Trio ’65.

The opener, “Israel,” is a fast moving modal blues that starts out swinging and then doubles down. Evans plays rapidly descending arpeggios in his first solo that are a little reminiscent of Coltrane’s “sheets of sound.” Israels takes two solo choruses, and Bunker takes a solo chorus and then trades eights for a bit with Evans, echoing some of the rhythms from the pianist’s solo along the way.

“Elsa” is a classic Bill Evans Trio ballad, with Israels leveraging the suspended note on the 5th to good effect in his introduction. The arrangement moves in a sort of shuffling waltz, with brisk patterns on Bunker’s brushes surrounding Evans and Israel’s playing like a filigree. Throughout, Israels alternates a simple underpinning of the chords with a more elaborate descending bass line that reinforces the melody, switching with Evans seemingly telepathically.

This version of “Round Midnight” plays the much-loved and oft-played Thelonious Monk standard in an intimate, but not simple arrangement. Indeed, the trio seems to manifest all the parts of a more elaborate quintet performance among themselves. Israel’s playing in the middle choruses takes more and more prominence until it seems to spontaneously morph into a bass solo.

“Love is Here to Stay” is an unsentimental but jovial romp through the old Gershwin standard. Ella Fitzgerald may have done the definitive version of this tune in her Song Books, but she’d need to hold onto her hat to keep up with the trio here. The effective use of space in the arrangement of the chorus and the outro that shifts the song into a different key are both worth listening for.

“How My Heart Sings” is a brisk reprise of the title song from his earlier Riverside session. Here you can really hear the difference made by Bunker’s contribution to the trio’s sound, his brisk snare and hi-hat work urging Evans and Israels along. Israels is a particular delight on this track, with a lyrical bass melody under the chorus that sings. The whole track is over in less than three minutes.

“Who Can I Turn To” is a contemplative ballad, with Evans taking the first chorus out of time before a transition into a swinging second verse. The transition between verses hangs suspended in harmony each time, as Israels pauses on the fifth before dropping back down to underpin the chords. Evans shifts both time, moving rhythmically around the chords, and harmony in his solo.

“Come Rain or Come Shine” begins as a more melancholy iteration of the group dynamic from the prior track, but where “Who Can I Turn To” eventually finds a sunny mood, here the clouds stay stubbornly overhead. Minor key aside, Israels’ solo here is almost as brilliant as his subtle playing behind Evans; the pizzicato chords he plays ever so slightly out of time behind Evans in the intro to the last verse are stunning.

“If You Could See Me Now” becomes a showcase for the trio as they shift the rhythmic emphasis of the tune with each verse, keeping the chord progressions the same but playing swung eighth notes in one iteration, legato runs in another, marcato progressions in the third, and on for each evolution of the tune. Each verse seems to turn the kaleidoscope another fraction, revealing new highlights in the tune.

Trio ’65 would be the penultimate album for this incarnation of the Evans trio; they would play together just once more on Bill Evans Trio with Symphony Orchestra. The trio we’ll hear next time has some fresh faces at both bass and drums who would bring new energy to Evans’ approach.

You can listen to the full album here:

Bill Evans, Trio 64

Album of the Week, February 4, 2023

Bill Evans was having a good year (or two) in 1962 and 1963. Following the sessions that produced Moon Beams and How My Heart Sings!, his contract was picked up by Verve Records, where Creed Taylor was still in full swing. He recorded a handful of additional sessions for Riverside in , including material that appeared on Interplay and on the great posthumous release Loose Blues. He then started his Verve recording career in two sessions as a sideman, one backing West Coast drummer Shelley Manne and one with the Gary McFarland Orchestra. He recorded a set of solo piano sessions, with overdubs, that became the Grammy award winning Conversations with Myself. And he played on some clunkers of albums with orchestra, performing current movie themes (hey, nobody’s perfect).

But he was never too far from his trio. In mid-1963 he recorded live sessions with Chuck Israels and Paul Motian at Manne’s club, “Shelly’s Manne-Hole,” that were later released on Milestone as Time Remembered. And on December 18, 1963, he entered Verve’s studios in New York City with Motian and the 28-year-old bassist Gary Peacock to record what would become Trio 64.

I haven’t been able to find any information to explain why these sessions had Peacock on bass, rather than Israels. The latter continued to work with Evans for several more years, as we’ll see in next week’s recording. And while Peacock went on to have a long career, recording many albums with Motian and (most notably) anchoring another piano trio, the famous Keith Jarrett Standards Trio with Jack DeJohnette, he only did this one session with Evans. (A possible reason: he went on to join Miles Davis’ band, but briefly, in early 1964.) But because Peacock did record this session, we have a rare opportunity to compare and contrast the difference that his style makes in Evans’ trio. Answer: not much, and a lot.

One thing you’ll hear immediately in the performances is that Peacock’s bass has a woodier, more percussive sound, possibly due to Taylor’s production choices. But Peacock also performs, on this outing, much more like a traditional bassist, anchoring the bottom of the harmonies rather than the more vocal-style countermelodies that Israels provided. In this trio, Evans was fully in charge, and there’s less of the give and take that characterizes his performances with Israels.

The repertoire on the album is also slightly unusual. Unlike the last sessions for Riverside, which featured Evans’ own compositions alongside standards from the Song Book, this album is entirely comprised of standards, albeit a few that are a little less than standard. For instance, the opening track — the theme to the “Little Lulu” cartoon shorts from Paramount that aired between 1943 and 1948 — has rarely been heard in other jazz contexts. And the trio’s performance of J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” reminds us that, as I’ve written before, most memorable 20th century Christmas songs are not only de facto part of the Great American Song Book, they’re often by Song Book songwriters.

Trio 64 is overall an engaging, even-keeled listen. While I don’t consider it essential in the way its predecessor albums are, it’s still fun—buoyant, even. Sadly, it was to be Paul Motian’s last performance with the trio. We’ll hear from a different incarnation of the group next time.

You can listen to the album here:

Bill Evans Trio, How My Heart Sings!

Album of the Week, January 28, 2023

Producer Orrin Keepnews said in the liner notes to Bill Evans’ How My Heart Sings, “This project was the first time I had set out to record two albums by the same group at the same time,” referring to the album of ballads that came from these same sessions, Moon Beams. The theory behind this album was a set of more up-tempo songs to accompany the unusual all-ballads format of the accompanying recording. As Evans himself noted, “the selections presented here are primarily of the ‘moving’ kind, though there is in the trio’s approach to all material the desire to present a singing sound.”

Whatever you call it, this second recording from the May 1962 sessions, not issued until January 1964, is unusually buoyant. But it’s not extroverted; it rings with a quieter joy. You can hear it from the beginning, where Evans opens Earl Zindars’ “How My Heart Sings” with a gentle swing that leans against the syncopation of Chuck Israels’ bass. Drummer Paul Motian is a little more present here than on Moon Beams, underscoring the shift from 3/4 to 4/4 in the second chorus, but he still stays mostly in the background, setting the stage for the dialog between Evans and Israels.

“I Should Care” leans into the rhythm harder, with Motian swinging against Evans through several choruses before falling back behind Israels’ solo. Here the bassist underscores Evans’ point about really singing the line, as the solo is lyrical and all melody. Evans plays with the beat throughout this one, shifting emphasis to the second and fourth beats, especially in the last chorus.

We’ve heard Dave Brubeck’s great standard “In Your Own Sweet Way” before, but here Evans puts his own stamp on the tune, taking it faster and playing with the beat in the bridge, then briefly departing from the gentle swing of the original into a racing second melody, as though bursting into a second song in the middle of a first. Chuck Israels’ solo takes the melody down into the bass depths and fragments it further; when Evans steps alongside him he tosses the fragments back and forth with the bassist as they go.

“Walking Up” is an Evans original, with more than a little of the feel of John Coltrane’s “Countdown,” from Giant Steps. But when he turns the corner (or maybe reaches the landing?) we’re suddenly in a different environment. Perhaps we’ve walked to the top of a bridge and that’s a ray of sun peeking through the fog? At any rate, we’re playing with meter again, moving from straight four into a syncopated off-beat, and it’s fascinating.

If you’re going to play “Summertime” and make it your own, you’d better have some good ideas to share. The version on this record, again, shares some DNA with a Coltrane recording, in this case the version of the great Gershwin tune on My Favorite Things. Both recordings feature a rhythmic motif around the modal suspension underpinning the verse, but where Trane’s version has the beat in McCoy Tyner’s piano, here it’s given to Chuck Israels, who opens the track with the motif and never puts it down. Evans’ version swings more than Trane’s, due in large part to Motian’s skillful fills. This is probably the one track where Motian steps out of the background and you can really hear all of the things he’s got bubbling away under the others.

“34 Skidoo” is the second of three Evans originals on the album, and the jauntiest by far. Sliding in and out of different meters, Evans and Israels take turns syncopating the tune and perform some incredible handoffs between their turns at the wheel. The momentum continues through Cole Porter’s “Ev’rything I Love”; the tune leans closer toward ballad status than most of the numbers in this set, but when Evans comes out of the first chorus he takes lyrical flight.

“Show-Type Tune” brings us out with another Evans composition. A wistful opening on the piano is followed by a metaphorical “squaring of the shoulders” and a more forthright, lyrical verse. The most extroverted performance on the album, the track features Evans pulling out trick after trick in his solo, shifting chromatic scales at the end, and seemingly taking flight at the end. It is a heck of a closing number from such a deeply introverted performer.

The two albums recorded during the May 1962 sessions re-established Evans as a force to be reckoned with, and put a capstone on his time with Orrin Keepnews’ Riverside Records. The following year saw him move to Verve and producer Creed Taylor, where he would make some deeply original recordings — as well as a fair amount of dreck. We’ll hear some of the more original and less drecky work next time.

You can listen to the album here:

The Bill Evans Trio, Moon Beams

Album of the Week, January 21, 2023

Jazz musicians are often inspired by playing with particular colleagues. Arguably neither Dave Brubeck nor Paul Desmond ever excelled individually the records that they made together. And Miles’ great quintets were defined by the partnership the trumpeter made with saxophonists John Coltrane, then Wayne Shorter. But Bill Evans was inspired by his bassists—first and most famously Scott LaFaro, then following his death with Chuck Israels. It is that collaboration that brings this, the first proper record of the new trio with Israels and drummer Paul Motian, to life.

Evans and his trio entered the Sound Makers Studio in New York on Thursday, May 17, 1962, three days after his second and final session with Jim Hall for Undercurrent was recorded in the same studio. They cut four tunes that day, of which “If You Could See Me Now” appeared on this record. They returned on May 29, June 2, and June 5. The bulk of today’s record was recorded in the June 2 session, along with the more balladic material recorded across the other three dates.

“Re: Person I Knew” is an opening statement that is shrouded in modal mystery. Displaying several Evans hallmarks off the bat, including the out of time entrance, the yearning of the modal pivot between the G minor and D minor, and even the cryptic title (an anagram of the name of the producer who had spurred him to reform his trio, Riverside Records founder Orrin Keepnews). And then there’s the playing of the trio. After the solo statement in the first eight bars by Evans, Israels makes his presence known with a bass line that keeps time while sketching out the space around the open fifth and octaves. Motian’s understated but complex drum fills keep the whole thing moving forward as Evans and Israels breathe, listen to each other, make statements. It’s a powerful performance.

“Polka Dots and Moonbeams,” which lends the album its title, returns to a more normal and less modal tonality, but Evans and Israels continue their duet. Following the first statement of the chorus, Israels begins a complex countermelody that underpins the entire remainder of the song. The conclusion has him bring the tune to an unusually irresolute finish, descending to a relative minor.

“I Fall In Love Too Easily,” the great dark Sammy Cahn/Jule Styne ballad, here drives headlong into the darkness and comes out blinking into the light of a major key. The transition is so gradual that you hardly notice it’s happened until the end, where the pianist underscores the major with a few bars that seem almost like a dance before resolving to the final major chord.

“Stairway to the Stars” is lights down, swaying to the music after midnight, with only Motian’s insistent drum pattern nudging things on away from slumber. Thus roused, Evans plays a rhapsodic variation on the theme over a high obligato in Israels’ bass. The coda, which returns to the feeling of out of time, brings the first side to a close.

Tadd Dameron’s “If You Could See Me Now” opens the second side, with Evans treating the tune as a more straightforward ballad for the initial chorus, then gently swinging into a syncopated restatement of the theme. The interplay between Israels and Evans here is striking and almost telepathic, with the pianist taking a breath as the bassist enters with a chord change or plays the first note of the next verse.

“It Might As Well Be Spring” begins as a yearning statement then seems to take flight, as Evans brings the melody through two choruses and then into a third that almost seems like it’s in double time. Throughout Israels maintains a sort of running commentary that turns outright sly at the end, where after the final chord he seems as though he is playing the beginning of “The Christmas Song” (“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire”) before continuing the downward run one more note.

Jerome Kern’s “In Love In Vain” carries the melancholy burden of being from the last show he worked on before his 1946 death, the musical film Centennial Summer, which also featured “Up with the Lark,” another perennial Evans favorite. Again the dialog between Israels and Evans borders on the telepathic, with the heroic final chorus in particular a stunning example of their collaboration.

The last track, “Very Early,” is the second Evans original on the album, and one that was destined to appear in his setlists for the rest of his life. The tune is in playful Evans mode, as it circles the tone center while keeping things major throughout. Israels’ solo is worth a second listen, as he does some harmonic things that lend an unexpected depth to the musical structure while keeping up a dancing rhythm throughout.

Where some of Evans’ earlier work could be so delicate as to seem tentative, there is joy that rings from these sessions, a feeling of surety and confidence. The album seems to announce that Evans is back, and better than ever; the partnership with Israels was off to a good start.

One interesting side note: another memorable album cover here, with a beautiful model in a provocatively romantic pose. The model is none other than Nico, some five years before her Andy Warhol inspired turn as chanteuse on the Velvet Underground’s debut. Like Evans, there’s more than a hint of sadness behind her smile here.

You can listen to the album here:

Bill Evans and Jim Hall, Undercurrent

Album of the Week, January 14, 2023

In April 1962, Bill Evans was still digging out from under the emotional burden of Scott LaFaro’s death, but at least he was recording. After Orrin Keepnews persuaded him to return to the studio with Herbie Mann in late 1961, he was intermittently in and out of the studio in various contexts — a brief session with the new trio that wouldn’t see the light of day until 2007, a recording with Todd Dameron’s orchestra, a solo session. And on April 24, he entered the Sound Makers Studio in New York City to record with a new collaborator, guitarist Jim Hall.

Hall had built a reputation in the late 1950s in the Jimmy Giuffre Trio, and went on to collaborate with a number of musicians in the following years, including Dave Brubeck’s long-time collaborator Paul Desmond, and Sonny Rollins (that’s Hall on Rollins’ The Bridge). Along the way he had appeared opposite Evans when the latter was in Tony Scott’s quartet, and with the Giuffre Trio opposite Evans in Miles’ band in a run of dates at Café Bohemia in 1958. (Hall recalls, “Miles would tease that our silly little trio would get more applause than his group.”)

The two men got together to toss around some ideas in Evans’ New York apartment, and then headed into the studio, recording the album on April 24 and May 14, bracketing the final recording session for Nirvana with Herbie Mann and the Evans trio. What happened in the studio is an example of jazz alchemy. The two players throughout listen to each other intently, trading melodic ideas and completing each others’ harmonic sentences.

The version of “My Funny Valentine” that opens the album shows off the duo’s musical imagination. Far removed from the meditative flavor of Miles’ various interpretations of the tune, the two take the tune at a breakneck speed that shows off the interplay between the two. In the first chorus, Evans takes the lead, but Hall’s accompaniment anticipates the chord changes up the scale, practically pulling Evans up after him! After the first chorus, things start to breathe a little more, with both Evans and Hall leaving rests in their solos between ideas, as though punctuating a conversation.

The second track, “I Hear a Rhapsody,” likewise flips around the convention established by John Coltrane and others who had covered this unlikely jazz standard. Where Coltrane’s recording takes a brisk pace, Hall and Evans meditate on the tune, with Hall’s guitar setting the pace via an out of tempo introduction that settles into a 60bpm reverie. Again, Evans and Hall exchange ideas in a way that seems psychic.

“Dream Gypsy” continues the trance, this time in a waltz. There is more than a hint of “Blue in Green” in the introduction, but rather than heading into modal bliss, this first performance of the lovely Judith Veevers tune settles into a dark mode with flavors of Spanish guitar.

The opening of the second side, Jim Hall’s “Romain” sounds as though it should be “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” before it turns a corner, and changes key. There’s still a tinge of the Cole Porter number in the song, but the melody circles around G minor, as though reluctant to leave, before returning to C major, not quite performing the “major to minor” transition from the earlier song. It’s bewitching, and the duo keeps the tempo moving so that the end effect is bluesy rather than lugubrious.

John Lewis’ “Skating in Central Park” likewise has a touch of the familiar about it, but the genial waltz sweeps you along too ingratiatingly to worry about where you might have heard a bit of it before, circling the proverbial pond until it reaches a final climactic chord.

“Darn That Dream” continues in much the same key as “Central Park,” but freely, with a short introduction by Evans yielding to an unaccompanied solo by Hall. The performance has the feel of the best of Bill Evans, that quiet moment where the chords give way into a moment of transfiguration. He was to find that transcendent quality in the next recording project he did, which would see him return to the studio with his new trio; we’ll hear from them next week.

A note on the cover: that’s a photograph from a 1947 Harper’s Bazaar shoot by fashion photographer Toni Frissell at Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida. The tourist attraction, known for its live “mermaids,” is still in operation today.

You can listen to the album here:

Herbie Mann and the Bill Evans Trio, Nirvana

Album of the Week, January 7, 2023

Bill Evans—whom we last saw providing compositions and historic accompaniment for Miles on Kind of Blue—was putting things back together. On June 25, 1961, he and his trio—Paul Motian on drums and Scott LaFaro on bass—performed a legendary set at the Village Vanguard club in New York City, from which the famed albums Live at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby were drawn. The trio was making a name for Evans’ innovative, dreamy compositions and for the unusual equality of voice among the three players in the trio, particularly with Scott LaFaro’s bass playing. Then, on July 6, 1961, LaFaro was killed in a car crash on US 20 in Seneca, New York. Evans was bereft, playing nothing but his and LaFaro’s version of “I Loves You, Porgy” for days and pausing all performances.

By December 1961 Evans was recording again. Spurred by his producer and Riverside Records founder, Orrin Keepnews, he put his trio back together, this time bringing in the bassist Chuck Israels. Before the trio recorded any sessions for Riverside, though, they found themselves in the Atlantic Records New York studios December 8, 1961 with producer Nesuhi Ertegun and flautist Herbie Mann.

If you have been on the Internet for any length of time you’ve seen the listicles of bad 1970s album covers. One, Push Push, is especially memorable, showing a balding, shirtless man in a hairy-chested slouch with a flute over his shoulder. That’s Herbie Mann. But before he was recording (pretty good!) jazz-funk albums with eye-bleach-worthy covers, he was a straight ahead post bop jazz soloist and composer. So while the pairing of the two might sound odd on paper, on vinyl it makes a lot more sense.

The opening track, “Nirvana,” is a Mann original, but it opens up sounding a lot like a Bill Evans composition, as the trio introduces the chordal progression almost at a whisper, Evans exploring modes around the chords as Israels’ bass quietly marks the fifths. When Mann’s flute enters it’s as though he was whispering too, and his melody provides Chuck Israels with the moment to start exploring the tune independently. The dialog among the players is sensitive and you can almost see them listening to each other and nodding quietly as each introduces new ideas. The tune unfolds like breathing.

The mood continues with “Gymnopédie,” one of the rare jazz covers of the second of the Erik Satie compositions, instead of the more commonly encountered first. The trio introduces the theme and Evans and Mann take turns essaying the melody of the composition. It’s a gentle meditation and true to the original composition, which depending on your inclination is either refreshing or slightly stultifying. Interestingly, though it sounds like a continuation of the first track, “Gymnopédie” and the final tune “Cashmere” were actually recorded at a different session in May of 1962.

“I Love You” changes things up, with the players digging into the faster tempo of the Cole Porter song and Mann’s flute ringing in a higher register. On the second chorus, Evans drops out and we hear just Mann, Motian and Israels, which seems to spur Mann’s improvisatory muscles. By the time the players reach the end of the tune, all are fully engaged, with Israels’ stretto in the accompaniment no less exciting than his solo passage, one of only two on the record.

“Willow Weep for Me” is back in ballad territory, and here the weakness of the record reveals itself: Herbie Mann is not that compelling a ballad player. He largely sticks to the melody or to very close improvisation around it, and while he tries to find the bluesier corners in Ann Ronell’s legendary tune, it’s ultimately not a compelling exercise. Evans finds more interesting things in the melody but ultimately this track is a little flat. “Lover Man” is better. The tempo is up just a touch, but more importantly Mann is more engaged, his improvisation and statement of the melody more compelling.

“Cashmere,” closing the album, is another Mann original and the trio digs into it, finding a slightly off-kilter syncopation in the accompanying line under Mann’s first statement of the melody. Mann’s subsequent improvisation picks up the syncopation and makes it central to his interpretation of the tune, and when he hands it back to Evans the latter’s chorus is sprightly and sly, zigging from corner to corner. Israels’ solo (here’s the other one!) digs into the silence between the melody lines and also into the syncopation, trying a one-note variation of the syncopation pattern over three bars as though leaning into the groove. His solo is supported by Motian’s unshowy but brilliant drumming, which quietly anchors each pulse of the entire album. The band’s returning statement brings the tune through several modes before closing on a final suspension.

Mann and Evans wouldn’t record again, but Evans would go on to make some essential records with his trio. We’ll hear some of them soon, but first we’ll hear another unusual record in his discography that he began recording between the December and May dates for Nirvana. Come back next week for more on that record.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue

Album of the Week, April 16, 2022.

The opening of “So What,” the first track on Miles’ magnum opus, might be Paul Chambers’ most famous performance. Forget everything he had done with Miles’ group to this time; forget his solo records; forget all the great work he did with Trane and Cannonball Adderley and Kenny Clarke and Wynton Kelly and pretty much every hard bop artist in the 1950s and early 1960s. That walking bass line that follows Bill Evans’ introspective opening will forever define jazz bass: simple, functional (it underpins the modal progression of the that serves as the first line of the song’s theme), and utterly unforgettable. Chambers would live not quite ten more years after recording that bass line, and his work would never again have the sort of prominence he had on this record.

Kind of Blue was that kind of record for many of the players who performed on it. It’s that kind of record, period. It’s probably the one jazz record you have if you don’t own any jazz, because everyone has told you to buy it. And they’re right: Kind of Blue is the pinnacle of a certain type of playing, recorded by a group of men who had developed a certain telepathic sense of line and melody and how to step up and when to lay back.

For this reason, Kind of Blue repays countless listenings. It’s not as out there as some of the work that was to come with the Second Great Quintet, but it’s as intricate as a precision timepiece and as effortless as exhaling. So these thoughts are what I observe as I listen today. I might find different things tomorrow.

This was one of the few Miles albums that put the names of each player on the cover, even pianist Wynton Kelly, who only sat in on “Freddie Freeloader.” As we’ve learned in this series, the players matter in all these recordings, but they especially matter here. This is because, as Bill Evans notes in the liner notes to the album (below), almost everything you hear on the album was a first take.

That “almost” is interesting, because it raises the spectre of a self-conscious mythologizing—especially when one learns that there were, in fact, two takes of “Flamenco Sketches,” and that the one on the record is Take 2. There is also, in the liner notes, references to Japanese painting and a description of the different forms of each song, in an attempt to hint at the formal underpinnings beneath the improvisations. Evans notes of “All Blues,” for instance, that it is “a series of five scales, each to be played as long as the soloist wishes until he has completed the series,” which is a bit like saying Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a set of rhythmic vibrations of air.

Jibes aside, it is impossible to overstate Evans’ contributions to the album, and indeed to this phase of Davis’ band generally. As we learned while listening to Miles Ahead, Miles had been leaning toward a less cluttered conception of his music that offered more freedom for improvisation without the density of the chord changes that had been the formal underpinning of small group jazz since the days of Charlie Parker. Evans brought to his work on the piano a sense of formalism inspired by the works of Stravinsky and Darius Milhaud, as well as a formal grounding in the modal theories of George Russell courtesy of a working relationship with the noted “third stream” composer over the course of several years. The combination of Evans with Miles’ new modal direction, heard in their initial joint recordings as well as live performances in Davis’s sextet, was electric. But Evans was already looking beyond his sideman work and beginning to record with his first great trio with Scott Lafaro and Paul Motian. Miles had to ask Evans to come back and record this album with him.

It is clear that Kind of Blue would not have happened without Evans. First, on purely practical grounds, he by all accounts composed “Blue in Green,” based on a request by Miles to Evans for a piece that centered around two chords, G minor and A augmented. When he was not credited on the record, he confronted Miles, who is said to have offered him $25 in compensation. Based on its similarity to Evans’ earlier composition “Peace Piece,” it’s likely that the pianist wrote “Flamenco Sketches” as well.

But the pianist contributed other elements to the record, most notably an abiding sense of melancholy, particularly in the two compositions mentioned above. But the genius of the album is that the melancholy is not a destination. The form of “Blue in Green” sees the pianist come full circle, repeating the opening figure as though returning again and again to a painful memory. But “Flamenco Sketches,” as it moves through the different scales, opens up that melancholy like a flower, moving beyond and through to a new horizon.

Adderley and Coltrane brought their own strengths to the record. Cannonball brings his own sense of harmonic conception, but his rhythmic approach is more linear than Trane’s, who bent the meter when it suited him. Indeed, his entrance on “Freddie Freeloader” literally stops the time, as the entire band drops out behind his first entrance. Throughout, though, both saxophonists bring an almost psychic connection with each other and the rest of the band, contributing to the frequent description of these tracks as perfect improvisation.

Evans would not record with Miles again. Nor would Adderley, who moved on to form his own group. Trane returned for a few tracks of Miles’ next small-group album, but his swan song with the group was effectively the tour of Europe that they mounted in 1960. We’ll hear that soon.

Listen (again).

Eddie Costa, Mat Mathews & Don Elliott At Newport

Album of the Week, February 5, 2022

For every Miles, Trane or Monk, there is an Eddie Costa.

Even the most enthusiastic jazz reissue program inevitably falls into a rut. You get the umpteenth repressing of Kind of Blue, you get (admittedly fabulous) live concert recordings from a high school janitor who just happened to be taping Thelonious Monk. But you don’t see too many revivals of interest in players like Eddie Costa, Mat Mathews and Don Elliott.

The Clef Series, issued on Verve in the US and Columbia in the UK, consisted of recordings related to Norman Granz, the impressario behind Verve and Ella Fitzgerald. In this particular case, Granz was making a bet on some of the lesser known musicians that played the afternoon sets at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1957.

Eddie Costa was on his way up then, a rising star on both piano and vibes, and was recording prolifically with his own groups and as sideman for Gigi Gryce, Gunther Schuller, Shelly Manne and others. He appeared on over 100 recordings before being killed in a car crash in 1962.

Mat Mathews, a Dutch jazz accordionist, was less well known, but he still recorded sessions with Herbie Mann, Oscar Pettiford, Kenny Clarke, Art Farmer, Percy Heath, Carmen McRae, Charlie Byrd and others. And Don Elliott was a multi-instrumentalist, recording on trumpet, vibes, mellophone and vocals in his career.

The sessions on this record are loose and swinging, up tempo and genuinely fun to listen to. They are not momentous, save perhaps in featuring an early recording by Don Elliott’s pianist, who had been studying with George Russell: Bill Evans. Evans would record one more album with Elliott before auditioning in early 1958 to replace Red Garland in Miles Davis’s sextet, and the rest is history.

I found this copy, of the first UK pressing, in my local bargain bin in Burlington. When I want to remind myself that jazz is supposed to be fun, I put this on the record player (or cue up the ripped tracks in Apple Music) and listen.

There doesn’t appear to be a full copy of the album anywhere, but here are a few tracks:

Friday bootleg time

An assortment of selections from Doom and Gloom from the Tomb that I’ve been meaning to check out for a while. In reverse chronological order (of posting, not of recording).

Sonic Youth, Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, North Carolina, August 5, 2000 – falling neatly in between the first show I saw of theirs and the next two, squarely in the middle of their NYC Ghosts and Flowers period. Be ready for beat poetry.

Pharoah Sanders – Festival de Jazz de Nice, Nice, France, July 18, 1971  – Live Pharoah? Yes please.

Bill Evans Trio – Pescara Festival, Italy, July 18, 1969 / Vara Studio, Hilversum, Holland; March 26, 1969 – two live Bill Evans dates that sound worth checking out.

Yo La Tengo Does Dylan  – of course they do. Curious about the cover of “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” which is on the short list of Dylan songs that I’d consider singing in public.

Leonard Cohen – The Paris Theatre, London, March 20, 1968 – OMG.