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Bill Evans: The Legendary Trio At Birdland 1960 Revisited
by Glenn Astarita
Bill Evans' The Legendary Trio at Birdland 1960 is a seminal recording that captures a fleeting moment of jazz brilliance, immortalizing the profound synergy of Evans with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. Recorded live at the iconic Birdland Jazz Club in New York City, this album is a vivid snapshot of a group at the peak of its creative powers, navigating the complexities of jazz standards and original compositions with unparalleled grace and fluidity. The trio's ...
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by John Eyles
Keen-eyed Bill Evans aficionados will know that this album is the pianist's third in the Revisited series by ezz-thetics, following At The Village Vanguard 1961 Revisited and the double-CD Duos with Jim Hall & Trios '64 & '65 Revisited, both released in 2023. The Legendary Trio" refers to the threesome of Evans, bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, the same group that recorded at the Village Vanguard in 1961. The Legendary Trio was brought to a tragic end ten ...
read moreBill Evans: The Legendary Trio At Birdland 1960 Revisited
by Chris May
Thank you, Boris Rose. The obsessive New York jazz maverick set out to record every musician of note who performed in the city's clubs from the mid 1940s through the mid 1970s. He must have come close to succeeding. His vast accumulated horde of tapes--today presumed more or less safe, stacked floor to ceiling in a sizeable Bronx basement under the guardianship of his daughter Elaine--is a treasure beyond mere monetary value. Annotated but uncatalogued, there are many hundreds, perhaps ...
read moreBill Evans: Duos With Jim Hall & Trios '64 & '65 Revisited
by Chris May
Although the evidence is circumstantial, it is more than possible that Bill Evans' collaborations with Jim Hall came about through proximity to George Russell. Even Alan Douglas, the producer of the duo's first album, did not claim credit for the liaison; and Douglas, who the same year brought together Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Max Roach, was not shy about coming forward with similar (questionable) claims. Evans was the first to meet Russell when, in late 1955, ...
read moreBill Evans Trio: At The Village Vanguard 1961 Revisited
by Mark Corroto
Imagine yourself in Greenwich Village June 25, 1961. You are in attendance at a small pie shaped club called the Village Vanguard run by Max Gordon. This is before it was to be crowned as a jazz holy ground. Sonny Rollins had recorded his famous A Night At The Village Vanguard" (Blue Note, 1957). John Coltrane would record there in November of 1961 and again in 1966. The spot is a shrine with sessions from legends such as Albert Ayler, ...
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by Chris May
Liner notes generally avoid referencing current affairs, for the good reason that what is front page news when the notes are being written may be gone and forgotten by the time the album is released. But there are exceptional circumstances, and here is one of them. On his father's side, Bill Evans was of Welsh heritage, and on his mother's side, Russian, or rather Ukrainian, the two countries during his lifetime often being conflated as a result ...
read moreBill Evans: Waltz For Debby
by Mark Corroto
In a very unscientific survey, 9 out of 10 jazz connoisseurs listed Waltz For Debby by the Bill Evans Trio as one of their desert island picks. For more than sixty years it has been a best seller and this reissue, like its companion release Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Craft Recordings, 2023), is part of a newly relaunched Original Jazz Classic series. From the original tapes, both are all-analog masters by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, pressed on 180-gram ...
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