Jazz Articles about Bill Evans

Bill Evans Trio: Everybody Digs Bill Evans

by Samuel Chell
September 4, 2007

This Keepnews Collection remaster/reissue of a 1958 recording is welcome if only as a reminder of Bill Evans' trio playing before the period of the celebrated Village Vanguard Sessions (Riverside, 1961). Instead of near-equal interaction by all three trio members, a supportive team of drummer Philly Joe Jones and bassist Sam Jones provides a non-intrusive backdrop for the featured performer, whose inventions are cast into bolder relief than ever. The silent spaces in the ballads are stark, inviting the listener ...

Bill Evans: The Oslo Concerts

by Ernest Barteldes
July 7, 2007

Bill Evans The Oslo Concerts Shanachie 2007

On this DVD, we see two distinctive phases of pianist Bill Evans' career - the first a 1966 concert played at the Oslo Munch Museum in 1966 with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Alex Riel, filmed in black and white, followed by his last filmed concert at the Molde Jazz Festival in 1980 with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe La Barbera. ...

Bill Evans: Emergence

by Nic Jones
June 26, 2007

Pianist Bill Evans has become one of the three pervasive influences on that instrument in these early years of the twenty-first century, along with Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner. This set gathers together some of his earliest records both as a sideman and a leader and, as such, plots the beginnings of a phenomenon.

One of Evans' earliest gigs was as the pianist in the band of clarinetist Tony Scott, who died at the age of 85 on March 28, ...

Bill Evans: The Oslo Concerts

by Samuel Chell
March 28, 2007

Bill Evans Trio The Oslo Concerts Shanachie Entertainment Corp. 2007

Arguably sharing with John Coltrane the distinction of being the primary shaper of the language of jazz over the past fifty years, Bill Evans was also a remarkably focused and consistent artist who paradoxically manifested different musical personae, each capable of attracting its own cadre of followers or detractors. Despite the spatial proximity of these two Evans' concerts, released for the first-time ...

Bill Evans and Bob Brookmeyer: The Ivory Hunters

by Samuel Chell
March 27, 2007

Yes, that's Bob Brookmeyer the valve trombonist, and it's Bill Evans the pianist who, during the same year as this recording, would appear with Miles Davis on the fabled Kind of Blue session (Columbia, 1959). Some listeners will no doubt be familiar with the session, originally issued by United Artists under Brookmeyer's name and with the descriptive sub-title “Double-Barrelled Piano." But if you're hearing about this curious match-up for the first time, and close to the beginning of April at ...

Bill Evans / Randy Brecker: Soul Bop Band Live

by Woodrow Wilkins
September 22, 2006

&BBill Evans and Randy Brecker are both, to put it succinctly, well-traveled. In more than twenty years as a solo artist, Evans has been nominated for several Grammy awards, establishing a repertoire that includes traditional jazz, funk, hip-hop and Brazilian styles. Brecker has been delivering straight jazz, fusion, rock and R for three decades. Collectively, the pair has performed or recorded with a wide range of acts, including Miles Davis, Parliament/Funkadelic, James Taylor, Steely Dan, Horace Silver, Chaka Khan, Dave ...

Bill Evans: The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings 1961

by George Kanzler
August 7, 2006

This 45th anniversary issue of all five June 25, 1961 sets by pianist Bill Evans' trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian is rightly considered the crowning preserved achievement of one of the most influential piano trios in jazz history. This group was the coming out of a new, sensitive, interactive mode, a new ideal of the piano trio as triumvirate. In hindsight, though, Motian still seems more a timekeeper at this juncture than the spacey, open drummer ...