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Five albums in a three-disc Box Set featuring the legendary Bill Evans.
“Bill had this quiet fire that I loved on piano. The way he approached it, the sound he got was like crystal notes or sparkling water cascading down from some clear waterfall.” Miles Davis
Bill Evans co-wrote ‘Kind Of Blue’ with Miles Davis and is regarded by many as the most influential jazz pianist of his generation. The trio he formed in 1959 with the brilliant, ill-fated young bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motion is surely as fine as any in jazz history.
This three-disc box set edition comprises almost everything this Evans trio recorded; The two miraculous studio albums, ‘Portrait In Jazz’ and ‘Explorations’; the intimate live sets recorded in New York in the summer of 1961, ‘Sunday Night At The Village Vanguard’ and ‘Waltz For Debby’. These masterpieces are complimented by the Birdland sessions – an earlier musical document of the trio in an authentic club setting – with disc three completed by the their first recordings together, with the jazz clarinettist Tony Scott; for the album ‘Sung Heroes’, his homages to Billie Holiday and the trumpeter “Hot Lips” Page.
The Canadian journalist Gene Lees was a close friend of Evans: “Bill wanted it to be a three- way colloquy, rather than pianist-accompanied-by-rhythm-section. And it was. LaFaro, still in his early twenties, had developed bass playing to a new level of facility. He had a gorgeous tone and unflagging melodicism. Motian, Armenian by background, had since childhood been steeped in a music of complex time figures and was able to feed his companions patterns of polyrhythm that delighted them both.
“Pianists waited for their albums to come out almost the way people gather at street-corners in New York on Saturday night to get the Sunday Times: ‘Portrait In Jazz’, ‘Explorations’, and then, ‘Waltz For Debby’ and ‘Sunday At The Village Vanguard’, derived from afternoon and evening sessions recorded live on June 25, 1961. These albums alone, if Bill had never recorded anything else, would have secured his position in jazz.”
Evans’ biographer, Peter Pettinger, on the Village Vanguard site: “The fruits of the group’s imagination that day continue to reward repeated hearings and to renew the listener’s mental and emotional stamina. Each piece occupies its own crystalline world of magic. This legacy has been called Bill Evans’s finest hour, and few would disagree For depth of feeling, in-group affinity, and beauty of conception with a pliant touch, these records will be forever peerless.”
Tracklist
DISC ONE:
PORTRAIT IN JAZZ
1 Come Rain Or Come Shine
2 Autumn Leaves
3 Witchcraft
4 When I Fall In Love
5 Peri’s Scope
6 What Is This Thing Called Love?
7 Spring Is Here
8 Someday My Prince Will Come
9 Blue In Green
EXPLORATIONS
10 Israel
11 Haunted Heart
12 Beautiful Love
13 Elsa
14 Nardis
15 How Deep Is The Ocean?
16 I Wish I Knew
17 Sweet And Lovely
DISC TWO:
SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD
1 Gloria’s Step [Take 2]
2 My Man’s Gone Now
3 Solar
4 Alice in Wonderland (Take 2)
5 All of You [Take 2]
6 Jade Visions [Take 2]
WALTZ FOR DEBBY
7 My Foolish Heart
8 Waltz for Debby (take 2)
9 Detour Ahead (take 2)
10 My Romance (take 1)
11 Some Other Time
12 Milestones
DISC THREE:
THE 1960 BIRDLAND SESSIONS
1 Autumn Leaves
2 Our Delight
3 Beautiful Love / Five (Closing Theme)
4 Autumn Leaves
5 Come Rain Or Come Shine / Five (Closing Theme)
6 Come Rain Or Come Shine
7 Nardis
8 Blue In Green 9 Autumn Leaves
10 All Of You
11 Come Rain Or Come Shine
12 Speak Low
SELECTIONS FROM SUNG HEROES WITH TONY SCOTT
13 Misery (for Lady Day)
14 Requiem for Hot Lips Page