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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 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 ReadingOrnette Coleman: Free Jazz to Ornette! Revisited
by Alberto Bazzurro
Che cosa si può dire ancora di un'opera che ha stravolto il corso del jazz, uno di quegli snodi dopo i quali--qui fin dal titolo--nulla può essere più come prima? Punti di svolta decisivi e ineludibili che cambiano il corso di un'arte, pietre miliari come Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in pittura, l'Ulysses di Joyce in letteratura, o più specificatamente in poesia Un coup de dés di Mallarmé? Nulla, appunto, perché tutto dev'essere per forza di cose già stato detto e scritto, ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: Free Jazz To Ornette! Revisited
by John Eyles
For ezz-thetics' revisited series' fourth Ornette Coleman album, the label has ventured back further than any of its previous Coleman albums, to New York City in December 1960 and January 1961. Recorded at A&R Studios on Wednesday December 21st 1960 from 8pm to 12.30am, the Free Jazz session produced two pieces, the thirty-seven minute “Free Jazz" itself, which was issued in September 1961 on an Atlantic album entitled Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation By The Ornette Coleman Double Quartet, and ...
Continue ReadingHampton Hawes: For Real!
by Richard J Salvucci
There are, Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, no second acts in American life. For pianist Hampton Hawes, born in 1928, there was scarcely a first. No sooner was he established as an up-and-coming talent than he was drafted into the Army. When he got out, he tried to pick up where he left off. A heroin habit he had acquired prior to military service led to a harsh incarceration because he refused to become an informer. Only a grant of clemency ...
Continue ReadingBill 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 ...
Continue ReadingBill Evans: The Legendary Trio At Birdland 1960 Revisited
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 ...
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