Bill Evans

Evans's first recording for Creed Taylor at Verve, and a one-session date with Shelly Manne on drums and Monty Budwig on bass. It is a West Coast rhythm section with an East Coast pianist, and the combination works because Manne was one of those rare drummers who could adapt to any context without losing his own identity. His brushwork here is so responsive to Evans's dynamics that the title feels earned.

The repertoire is all standards and show tunes, two of them by Irving Berlin. "Washington Twist" has more rhythmic energy than you expect from an Evans date, pushed by Manne's insistent swing. "Danny Boy" is the quiet center of the album, Evans treating the melody with the reverence he usually reserved for ballad standards like "My Foolish Heart."

It is a pleasant, well-played record rather than a revelatory one. Budwig is a competent bassist but does not bring the conversational counterpoint of LaFaro or Israels. Still, it marks the beginning of the Verve period, and the production by Taylor and engineering by Rudy Van Gelder gives everything a warmth and clarity that the Riverside records sometimes lacked.

The concept sounds like a gimmick: Evans overdubbing three separate piano tracks on top of each other, playing on Glenn Gould's Steinway CD 318. But the result won a Grammy and remains one of the most fascinating solo piano experiments in jazz. Evans was not layering for density. He was having a conversation with himself, each track responding to what had come before, creating a three-way interplay that mirrors what he sought in his trio work.

"NYC's No Lark" (an anagram of Sonny Clark, who had recently died) is the emotional center: a tribute to a fellow pianist rendered in three voices that orbit each other with an intimacy no band could achieve. "Round Midnight" builds from a sparse first track to a full, orchestral density by the third layer.

The technology was primitive by modern standards: Evans listened through headphones to the first track while recording the second, then listened to both while recording the third. The discipline required is staggering, and the musical result justifies every bit of it.

A one-off trio with Gary Peacock on bass and Paul Motian returning on drums: the only recording of this particular group, and one of the most striking albums in the Evans catalog. Peacock was a different kind of bassist than either LaFaro or Israels. His tone was darker, his time feel less grounded, and his melodic instincts more angular. The result is a trio that sounds both familiar and unsettled.

"Little Lulu" opens with an energy that catches you off guard, Evans playing with a rhythmic assertiveness that Peacock and Motian match beat for beat. "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" is unexpectedly moving: a Christmas novelty transformed into something wistful and searching, Evans finding the melancholy buried inside the cheerful melody.

This was Motian's last studio recording with Evans, and you can hear a maturity in their interaction that goes beyond the Riverside years. They are older now, and the music carries that weight. It is a five-star record for the simple reason that every track reveals something new on every listen.

Recorded over two nights at the Trident in Sausalito, California, but not released until 1971, against Evans's wishes. He was wrong. The trio with Chuck Israels and Larry Bunker plays with an easy confidence that the studio recordings of this period do not always capture, and the live setting brings out a looseness in Evans's phrasing that is deeply appealing.

Bunker, a studio drummer and vibraphonist, was a different kind of timekeeper than Motian: more precise, less atmospheric, but no less musical. His interaction with Israels provides Evans a stable platform from which to take chances, and on "Nardis" and "How Deep Is the Ocean" he does exactly that.

The sound quality is good for a live recording of this era, and Wally Heider's engineering captures the room ambience without obscuring the trio's delicate balance. Not a revelation, but a solid document of the working band at ease in front of an audience.

The Israels-Bunker trio at its best in the studio. Evans had just won the DownBeat readers' poll, outpolling Oscar Peterson for the first time, and the confidence of that recognition comes through in the playing. "Who Can I Turn To" is a masterclass in ballad interpretation: Evans strips the melody to its harmonic core and rebuilds it with voicings so rich they sound like a small orchestra.

Israels and Bunker have found their groove together by this point. The interaction is not the telepathic conversation of the LaFaro trio, but something more structured and equally satisfying: a pianist who knows exactly what his rhythm section will do, and a rhythm section that knows how to anticipate every shift in direction.

The studio sound is immaculate, Creed Taylor's Verve productions consistently gave Evans a sonic clarity that suited his music. This is the high-water mark of the second trio, the point at which their ensemble playing reached its peak before Israels's departure.

The idea: surround the Evans trio with a symphony orchestra arranged and conducted by Claus Ogerman. The concept could have produced something saccharine, but Ogerman's writing is restrained and Evans's playing is uncompromised. The strings do not smother the piano; they extend its harmonic palette into a richer timbral space.

The Granados piece, "Granadas," drawn from his "The Maiden and the Nightingale," is the standout: Evans plays the Spanish melody with a delicacy that makes the orchestral accompaniment feel like a natural extension of his own voicings. "My Bells" is the most adventurous arrangement, Ogerman building a modernist orchestral texture around Evans's spare improvisation.

Not every track works equally well, and the orchestral format inevitably limits the trio's interactive freedom. But as a document of Evans's sound translated into a larger canvas, it succeeds more often than it fails, and the best moments rival anything in the third-stream literature.

The sequel to Undercurrent, recorded four years later at Van Gelder Studios. If the first duo record was about discovering what two chordal instruments could do together, this one takes that discovery for granted and simply makes music. The interaction is more confident, the repertoire more varied, and the emotional range wider.

"Angel Face" has a warmth that borders on tenderness, Hall's guitar singing the melody while Evans lays down a harmonic bed so perfectly voiced it could stand alone as a solo piano piece. "Turn Out the Stars" would become one of Evans's most performed compositions, and this early reading with Hall is among the most intimate.

The engineering by Rudy Van Gelder gives both instruments a presence that is almost three-dimensional. You can hear the resonance of Hall's guitar body and the sustain of Evans's piano in a way that makes the duo format feel larger than two instruments. A quiet masterpiece.

A concert divided into two halves: the first with the trio (Israels and Arnold Wise on drums), the second with an orchestra arranged and conducted by Al Cohn. The trio half is the more memorable. This is Wise's only commercial trio recording with Evans, and his interaction with Evans and Israels is tentative but musical. This was also Israels's last recorded appearance as a regular member of the trio.

The orchestral half features a big band with Clark Terry, Bob Brookmeyer, and Eddie Daniels among the personnel. That half of the concert has never been issued. Helen Keane felt Evans did not play his best with the orchestra, and the tapes stayed in the vault.

A transitional document: the end of the Israels era, the last time Israels would record as a regular member of the trio (the two met again in the studio in 1975 on Israels's National Jazz Ensemble record), and a glimpse of the orchestral ambitions that would find fuller expression in the Ogerman collaborations.

The debut of Eddie Gomez in the Evans trio, and you can hear immediately that something has changed. Gomez was twenty-two years old, a Juilliard graduate with extraordinary technique, and his bass playing brings a virtuosic energy that none of Evans's previous bassists had offered. Where LaFaro conversed and Israels supported, Gomez challenges: his lines are faster, more ornate, more forward in the mix.

Shelly Manne returns on drums, providing a bridge between the old sound and the new. His West Coast precision balances Gomez's East Coast intensity, and Evans sits comfortably between them, exploring the new possibilities this combination opens up. "Unless It's You" and "These Things Called Changes" are the highlights: Evans at his most lyrical, Gomez already showing the harmonic sophistication that would define his eleven-year partnership with Evans.

This is a beginning, and it sounds like one: full of potential, occasionally tentative, but unmistakably the start of something important. The Evans-Gomez partnership would become the longest and most productive of Evans's career.

The sequel to Conversations with Myself, this time using two overdubbed tracks instead of three. The reduction from three layers to two makes the music more transparent but also less rich.

"Emily" is the best track: Evans playing the Johnny Mandel ballad with such tenderness that the overdub technology becomes invisible. You forget that one man is playing both parts. "Funny Man," an Evans original, is where the two voices most clearly talk back to each other, a genuine dialogue.

A diminished return on the original concept, though not without its pleasures. The problem is not the execution but the inevitability of comparison: the first Conversations set a standard that no sequel could match.

Recorded at the Village Vanguard in August 1967 but shelved for fifteen years. The trio features Eddie Gomez on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums, a combination that brings back the drummer from Everybody Digs Bill Evans and the 1962 Interplay sessions. Philly Joe brings more fire than any of Evans's regular drummers, and the results are more extroverted than usual.

Some of the material is uneven, but the best tracks have a vitality that the more polished studio recordings of this period lack. Gomez is still finding his way in the trio, and his interaction with Philly Joe has a raw energy that later, more refined partnerships would smooth away.

A curiosity more than an essential, but it fills in a gap in the discography: the first year or so of the Evans-Gomez partnership, with a drummer who pushed Evans harder than anyone since the LaFaro days.