Review Summary: Some Other Time
This review is part three in a series of three. Part one can be found here https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/87560/Bill-Evans-Live-In-Paris-1972-Vol-1/
Bill Evans
1929 (Plainfield, New Jersey) – 1980 (New York City, New York)
You could say a lot about Bill Evans.
You could say that he was the leader of a trio for most of his career, but that he is perhaps most well-known for his work with Miles Davis during the heyday of modal jazz, most notably on
Kind Of Blue (1959, coincidentally the best-selling jazz album ever). That he then quitted Davis’ sextet, and created his first trio with LaFaro and Motian, with whom he recorded one of the most critically acclaimed live albums in jazz history, 1961’s
Sunday at the Village Vanguard.
You could say that many of the tunes he wrote (13 of the 25 tracks from the
Live in Paris 1972 albums are by his own hand) ended up becoming universally loved jazz standards, including but not limited to “Re: Person I Knew”, “Very Early”, “Waltz for Debby”, and “Peri’s Scope”.
You could say something about the many challenges that he experienced in his life, including incredible peer pressure in Miles’ sextet (during the sessions that led to
Kind Of Blue), how he was thoroughly shaken by LaFaro’s unexpected death (the bassist of his personal favourite trio, killed in a car accident at the age of 25), or about his substance abuse, his financially difficult times resulting from his addictions, or his ex-partners’ suicide.
If you are Wikipedia, you could say about Evans that he introduced many new approaches to jazz playing, and that his experimentation would influence countless of others. You could say he took inspiration from the likes of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and the ever-present Johann Sebastian Bach. That he added tone chords, used modal inflections, unconventional substitutions, and strange yet wonderful (my words) modulations. If you were Wikipedia, you could continue, saying that one of his main contributions to the harmonic language of jazz is a technique that he developed with his left hand. This would allow him to stay within the harmonious, central registers of the piano, which created a continuity in his chord progressions and transitions, leaving room for the other hand provide contrapuntal melodies. In Evans’ own words: “If I am going to be sitting here playing roots, fifths and full voicings, the bass is relegated to a time machine.” And, oh, how happy we are with these ideas!
Speaking about the bass, Eddie Gómez, Evans’ long-time bassist, who also graces your ears on these
Live in Paris 1972 albums, said about Bill in an 1968 interview: “There are so many facets of Bill’s playing, but I guess it all comes down to the way he goes about making music. It’s a very clear, straight, honest way of going at it; there’s nothing that’s contrived. He can play very sensuously: everything is directly concerned with music.” You only have to press play on the rendition of
Kind Of Blue classic “Blue'n Green” (right on this volume) to hear what Eddie means.
Talking about
Kind Of Blue, if you are the one and only Miles Davis himself, you could say about Bill Evans that, while Miles wrote “Nardis” for Cannonball Adderley in 1958, only Evans plays it the way he had intended it. On a side not, just how GOOD is the
Live in Paris 1972 version of that almighty tune, right here on this volume!
Or, if you are a random person on YouTube, you could say about Bill: “Evans "playing the silences" as attentively as the notes themselves puts him into a class of one.” Whatever that may mean, Evans’ keen ear for silences and how they add to tension and emotional connection in his music is on display everywhere here. One of the best examples of this would be Volume 3 opener “Elsa”, a track that shows this understanding of the power of silence beyond the shadow of a doubt.
But I think the most important thing you could say about Bill Evans is something he said about himself. In a 1970 interview in Finland, just two years before the incredible
Live in Paris 1972 concert, Evans said the following:
“To say a certain kind of a thing, to try to show somebody something through music, even show myself something through music, … something that’s good, and something they feel maybe enriches their life a little bit, or makes them feel better as a person. … Jazz is a certain process that’s not an intellectual process. You use your intellect to take apart the materials and learn to understand them and learn to work with them. But actually it takes years and years and years of playing to develop the facility so that you can forget all of that, and just relax, and just play. … You play for yourself first and foremost, and I just don’t like to hear superfluous things, and I hope there aren’t too many elements that are superfluous in what I do. … I like to state things as clearly as I can, as concisely as I can, I don’t like to make people work hard to understand what I’m doing.”
Rest assured, Bill, we understand.
Track list Volume 3
Elsa 7:20
Detour Ahead 5:20
34 Skidoo 6:10
Alfie 5:00
Peri’s Scope 8:50
Blue’n Green 4:00
Emily 6:30
Who Can I Turn To 6:20
Some Other Time 4:45
Nardis 11:00
Waltz For Debby 6:00
