Sweden, Belgium, Denmark
Tonight’s Jazz à la Mode album feature is the Bill Evans Trio recording, Portrait in Jazz. The 1959 Riverside session was the first by the legendary Evans trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. It was produced by Orrin Keepnews, and began the extraordinary odyssey of the trio, which over the next eighteen months revolutionized the concept of a piano trio and the interactive nature of a rhythm section and front line players.
Keepnews died on March 1. Here’s Evans with Larry Bunker on drums and Chuck Israels on bass playing “Re: Person I Knew,” which is an anagram for Keepnews’ name.
Earlier today, a recent YouTube post on Evans caught my eye, a nicely produced compendium of trio concerts made between 1964 and ’75 at venues in Sweden, Belgium, and Denmark. The 1965 concert reunites Evans and alto saxophonist Lee Konitz. They’d worked together on a studio session in 1959 that featured Jimmy Giuffre arrangements, and played the Half Note with Warne Marsh, Jimmy Garrison, and Paul Motian. Touring with a George Wein “Best of Newport” package and working with the great drummer Alan Dawson and the 19-year-old Danish bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, Konitz recalled in a conversation with Andy Hamilton, “I was supposed to play a few festivals with him…Bill was kind of sick and we didn’t really get along too well. So I played in a trio mostly and then we played one tune just to recognize the contract…I played very well those nights, I think. A lot of times I had a problem with his playing. It sounded very tense to me, or else moody in some way. Sometimes when he was trying to swing hard, it wasn’t relaxed enough.”
On the other hand, Evans’s biographer Peter Pettinger hears something more relaxed in the pianist’s work with the trio. He complimented Dawson for being “constantly engaging” and for providing “an attractive bouncy feel willingly adopted by Evans.” With Konitz, the quartet plays “Melancholy Baby,” which was also in the Half Note repertoire.
Like many Evans devotees, Konitz saw his real strength as a ballads player, telling Hamilton, “He played beautifully on ballads, and very personally.” Ballads highlight these performances, from the opening notes of “My Foolish Heart” and “Detour Ahead,” both of which Evans had played at the Village Vanguard with LaFaro and Motian, on through the movie themes, “Emily” and “Alfie,” and two of the most iconic ballads of modern jazz, Tadd Dameron’s “If You Could See Me Now,” and Thelonious Monk’s “‘Round Midnight.”
Here’s a list of the titles and personnel for the five concerts documented here.
LIVE IN SWEDEN 1964 (9:23)
Piano- Bill Evans
Bass-Chuck Israels
Drums- Larry Bunker
1. My Foolish Heart
2. Israel
LIVE IN BELGIUM 1965 (14:13)
Piano- Bill Evans
Alto Sax- Lee Konitz
Bass-Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen
Drums- Alan Dawson
3. Detour Ahead
4. My Melancholy Baby
LIVE IN DENMARK 1970 (15:12)
Piano- Bill Evans
Bass-Eddie Gomez
Drums- Marty Morrell
5. Emily
6. Alfie
7. Someday My Prince Will Come
LIVE IN SWEDEN 1970 (29:04)
Piano- Bill Evans
Bass-Eddie Gomez
Drums- Marty Morrell
8. If You Could See Me Now
9. ‘Round Midnight
10. Someday My Prince Will Come
11. Sleepin’ Bee
12. You’re Gonna Hear From Me
13. Re: Person I Knew
LIVE IN DENMARK 1975 (29:20)
Piano- Bill Evans
Bass-Eddie Gomez
Drums- Eliot Zigmund
14. Sareen Jurer
15. Blue Serge
16. Up With The Lark
17. But Beautiful
18. Twelve Tone Tune Two