Bill Evans Trio 1965

October 23, 2011 11:08 AM

Bill Evans Trio, London, March 19, 1965

Bill Evans - piano
Chuck Israels - bass
Larry Bunker - drums

Part I

Five (theme)
Elsa
Summertime
Come Rain Or Come Shine
My Foolish Heart
Re: Person I Knew
Israel
Five (theme)

Part II

Five (theme)
How My Heart Sings
Nardis
Who Can I Turn To?
Some Day My Prince Will Come
How Deep Is The Ocean?
Waltz For Debby

posted by xod (15 comments total)

Awesome find. This made my night. Many thanks.

I've posted this before on the blue, but I was introduced to Bill Evans though a poetry class at college where we read August Kleinzahler, and later I found his poem "Whatever it takes"

What It Takes

He stared for hours
at the cat
taking his ease under the calla leaf
or fog
pour in late afternoon
whelming the tower on the hill

how bird truck or shout
wind&light
scored day the way the music
roll in a nickelodeon's scored
and what it played in the mind

or the young Bill Evans
before Scott LaFaro died
playing
My Foolish Heart
again and again
fennel, lobelia shadow&flies
however many times it takes

~August Kleinzahler
posted by FunGus at 11:14 AM on October 23, 2011 [4 favorites]

Chuck there has some big shoes to fill – and he doesn't too bad. And this is the only performance I've seen with Larry Bunker on drums instead of Grady Tate.

This is really fantastic; watching Bill Evans is always a deep pleasure, and he's in rare form here. What an incredible man. Thank you, xod.
posted by koeselitz at 11:16 AM on October 23, 2011

This is what Sunday (nay, everyday), is for!!! This is brilliant.
posted by Artichoke Dance Off!! at 11:31 AM on October 23, 2011

Israels reminded me of a bit from Pynchon's V.:

The group on the stand had no piano: it was bass, drums, McClintic and a boy he had found in the Ozarks who blew a natural horn in F. The drummer was a group man who avoided pyrotechnics, which may have irritated the college crowd. The bass was small and evil-looking and his eyes were yellow with pinpoints in the center. He talked to his instrument. It was taller than he was and didn't seem to be listening.

posted by Trurl at 11:40 AM on October 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Awesome! I've got a bunch of Bill Evans' music, and this is a treat to see him play live.
posted by Eekacat at 12:37 PM on October 23, 2011

Thanks for sharing this, xod. This has just made my Sunday.
posted by .kobayashi. at 1:00 PM on October 23, 2011

Thanks for this. I always think of this poem by Jan Zwicky when I hear Bill Evans, and often play him on rainy days after work.

Bill Evans: "Here's That Rainy Day"

On a bad day, you come in from the weather
and lean your back against the door.
This time of year it's dark by five.
Your armchair, empty in its pool of light.

That arpeggio lifts, like warmth, from the fifth of B minor,
offers its hand - let me
tell you a story . . . But in the same breath,
semitones falling to the tonic:
you must believe and not believe:
that door you came in
you must go out again.

In the forest, the woodcutter's son
sets the stone down from his sack and speaks to it.
And from nothing, a spring wells
falling as it rises, spilling out
across the dark green moss.
There is sadness in the world, it says,
past telling. Learn stillness
if you would run clear.
posted by Beardman at 4:34 PM on October 23, 2011 [4 favorites]

Blissfully cool. Much appreciated.
posted by nickyskye at 6:06 PM on October 23, 2011

xod,

Sorry for another "Me, too" post, but this really is a great Sunday treat after spending five hours in traffic. Blissful is the right word, nickyskye.
posted by Cataline at 6:31 PM on October 23, 2011

Just wow. Thanks.
posted by newdaddy at 7:21 PM on October 23, 2011

Waltz for Debby is one of my favourite songs, I'll stay up late if I have to in order to get to it, but I won't rush it, Bill wouldn't want that.
posted by furtive at 7:45 PM on October 23, 2011

Bill Evans. Stan Getz (Haruki Murakami's favorite musician - his new tome, IQ84 is to be released in America in a day or two -). Art Pepper. Bix. A few white musicians have been outstanding in their contribution to jazz. Fred Hersch is another.

I think that in the case of Evans and Hersch, especially, as pianists, their somewhat delicate - or nuanced - approach to the instrument, which, being officially a percussion instrument, have led to their neglected status in the pantheon of jazz. Many pianists (including such nobodies as myself) stand guilty as charged in the overemphasis of the percussive qualities of the instrument, although the demands of jazz often call for the piano - hey, it's part of the "rhythm section" - to add some of the rhythmic complexities that the African origins of jazz demand.

Thanks for the link!
posted by kozad at 8:02 PM on October 23, 2011

Jazz on the Tube
posted by unliteral at 8:28 PM on October 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

oh yes. thankyou!
posted by peterkins at 5:18 AM on October 24, 2011

He's my favorite pianist. Thanks!
posted by cman at 10:11 AM on October 24, 2011