Today's Listening

There have been no posts for a while due to the business of school starting and other life changing issues which stole my concentration away. Yesterday I was glad to find out that a new Bill Evans double CD had been released, The SESJUN Radio Shows, comprising two different trios and a fantastic duo session with bassist Eddie Gomez. The duo session is particularly valuable, as we get to hear Eddie's real bass sound, no pick up and no amp. The synchronicity between Bill and Eddie on these tracks is astounding, and even though as improvisers they have very different approaches, the power of their interplay is unmistakeable. Drummer Eliot Zigmund is added for a session a few years later, and although his playing is competent and complimentary, I much prefer the later trio with Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera, heard to advantage on the second of the two CDs. Finally we get to hear a well recorded, detailed presentation of this trio. The performance of My Romance includes fantastic brush work from LaBarbera and time shifts each chorus in the trades between Marc and Joe. Bill sounds challenged by these shifts, and his reaction to what LaBarbera is playing makes for inspired listening. Also of note is a fantastic extended version of  Nardis. 

       Then as if we don't have enough to contend with, there are tracks with special guest Toots Thielemans on harmonica and an inspired and beautiful Blue and Green. The sublime accompaniment and duo work between Evans and Thielemans on Days of Wine and Roses is way more inventive and swinging than the famous version on Affinity.

My Romance

Time Remembered

This CD is uneven, but when it's good, it's really good. Vocalist Carmen McRae teams up with Shirley Horn, who mostly sticks to piano accompaniment on this one, along with her trio, noted for their ability to play exceedingly slow tempos with an elastic appreciation of the tempo. Carmen's tribute to Sarah Vaughan has her breathing new life into well worn favorites, which she has no problem doing. Unfortunately, the recording is coated over with reverb, too much reverb, and not the greatest quality reverb either. It would be really nice to hear a remix of this almost dry so we could hear the detail and depth from the trio. I'm also not sure Send in the Clowns would have been my first choice for these two, but somehow Carmen's stretching of the melody and innovative phrasing coupled with Shirley's fantastic sense of space and nuance transcends the material. And rightly so, for this is exactly what Sarah Vaughan did with much of the material that was foisted on her on her EmArcy recordings; no matter what crap she was given to record, she always performed flawlessly and extracted some kind of new life from the selections.

Send In The Clowns