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Bill Evans Trio: Haunted Heart: The Legendary Riverside Studio Recordings (Remastered 2025)
by Mark Corroto
On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile, a barrier many believed human beings could never break. Today, any elite miler can run that time, which makes Bannister's accomplishment harder for modern sports fans to fully appreciate. Something similar happens when listening to pianist Bill Evans' two Riverside studio sessions, Portrait in Jazz (1959) and Explorations (1961), recorded some 65 years ago. Because contemporary pianists like Brad Mehldau, Fred Hersch, Denny Zeitlin and Bill Charlap have absorbed ...
Continue ReadingA Waltz for Ludwig
by Blue Note Portal
There are rare sacred moments when music stops being sound and becomes light. A perfect note hangs in the air, silence breathes, and for the space of a heartbeat, the veil thins--revealing a place where music lives, along with pure thought, beyond time, space and language. There is only harmonic resonance: the silent conversation between souls who listen deeper than time. Sometimes the opening swings wider, and the Blue Note Portal opens. Ludwig van Beethoven's Journal Entry--A Letter ...
Continue ReadingVerve's Bossa Nova U.S.A.
by Arnaldo DeSouteiro
Paul Desmond: Samba with Some Barbecue Originally titled “Struttin' with Some Barbecue" in 1941, this Satchmo tune lost its Dixie beat and got a bossa groove in the hands of the infallible Don Sebesky. Brazilian drummer Airto Moreira, then a newcomer in the New York jazz scene, provides a fiery propulsion to Paul Desmond's lyrical approach and “dry martini" alto sound. Different from the sad results of pseudo-bossa albums by Gene Ammons, Sonny Rollins, and so many others, this is ...
Continue ReadingTadd Dameron: Fontainebleau & Magic Touch Revisited
by Maurizio Zerbo
Le linee guida di Fontainebleau e Magic Touch, i due capolavori di Tadd Dameron qui riuniti in un solo CD, furono teorizzate dal pianista di Cleveland sulle pagine della rivista Record Changer, in cui descrisse come la sua adesione all'estetica del bebop fosse mediata dalla classica scrittura swing. Le forme multitematiche ABA e i trasporti di chorus di “The Scene Is Clean," nonché i quattro movimenti di “Fontainebleau" che non contengono una sola nota improvvisata, forniscono prove tangibili ...
Continue ReadingBill Evans: Explorations
by Richard J Salvucci
It is not easy to review a masterpiece. The celebrated American intellectual historian Perry Miller was once reduced to muttering something like “What am I supposed to say about the damn thing?" The damn thing in question being Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Professor Miller, meet pianist Bill Evans. Trying to say something intelligent about Bill Evans after so much has been written and said in the now nearly fifty years after his death defines a Fool's Errand. So why ...
Continue ReadingBill Evans: In Norway: The Kongsberg Concert
by Ian Patterson
The release of In Norway: The Konsberg Concert coincides with the sixtieth anniversary of the Konsberg Jazz Festival. Double cause for celebration. The steady flow of archival Evans recordings shows no signs of abating, with In Norway: The Konsberg Concert, recorded in 1970, coming hot on the heels of the previously unreleased Bill Evans: Behind The Dikes: The 1969 Netherlands Recordings (2021), Bill Evans: Treasures: Solo, Trio and Orchestra Recordings from Denmark (1965-1969) (2023) and Tales: Live in Copenhagen (1964) ...
Continue ReadingBill Evans: In Norway
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Bill Evans' career lasted from the late 1950s until his passing in 1980, but beginning around about 20 years into the 21st century CD releases under Evan's name have been rolling along at a brisk clip, thanks to the Resonance, Elemental and Ess- thetics Record labels. Zev Feldman, often called “The Jazz Detective," has played a big part in this steady release of mostly laudable recordings, uncovering lost or shelved tapes of Evan's concerts, resulting in albums like Bill ...
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