Empathy (album)

chronology
Empathy
Studio album by Bill Evans
Publication ; (s)	1963
Label (s)	verve
Format (s)	CD
Genre (s)	jazz
Title (number)	6/15
running time	35:02 (LP), 72:42 (CD)
occupation	Piano : Bill Evans ; Bass : Monty Budwig ,; Drums Shelly Manne ;
production	Creed Taylor
Studio (s)	Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey

Empathy is a jazz album by Bill Evans , recorded on August 14, 1962 in Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey and released in 1963 by Verve Records .

The album

After eight years the pianist was under contract with Orrin Keepnews ' label Riverside Records , he left the troubled label on the advice of his new manager Helen Keane and switched to the larger Verve label in 1962. On August 14, 1962, his first recording session for Verve took place in Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs.

The album was created under strange circumstances, as the critic Dave Nathan noted in Allmusic : Shelly Manne & His Men were performing at the time in New York's Village Vanguard , alternating with the Bill Evans Trio. With the permission of Orrin Keepnews, to whom Evans was still under contract, Creed Taylor managed to organize a joint session in Van Gelder's studio with Evans and Shelly Manne . The man's bass player at the time was Monty Budwig , who then completed the trio. In contrast to the previous Riverside albums (on which the pianist also played his own compositions), the first release for Verve contains a selection of jazz standards from the Great American Songbook with two relatively unknown numbers by Irving Berlin , as well as Rodgers / Hart's “With a Song in My Heart ”, Frank Loesser's “ I Believe in You ”, the traditional ballad“ Danny Boy ”and the Gordon Jenkins composition“ Goodbye ”.

Reviews of the album

Nathan Davis at Allmusic assessed the result of the interaction with Manne and Budwig positively: " As a result, his playing appears easier, freer and more relaxed than it was a while ago ". The album started with a brisk version of Irving Berlin's "The Washington Twist". The author pays tribute to Shelly Mann's game, which drives the pianist to a more lively style of playing than usual, such as Loesser's "I Believe in You" or Berlin's "Let's Go Back To The Waltz", a relatively unknown Berlin title that gives Evans the opportunity for the lyrical Game give. The longest track is the bold version of the often mocked “With a Song in My Heart”.
Richard Cook and Brian Morton awarded the album the second highest rating in the Penguin Guide to Jazz and praised the fantastic teamwork, especially in "With a Song in My Heart" at the spontaneous session. The Evans biographer Hanns E. Petrik does not always find the choice of titles satisfactory; some of them, in his opinion, looked joyless. An example of this seems to him to be Irving Berlin's “The Washington Twist”, a petrik-meaningless song based on the harmonies of the hit song “Franky and Johnny”. The record also offers something pleasant - the nine-minute variation of the musical melody "With a Song in My Heart" written by Richard Rodgers . In addition to a refined analysis of the theme harmonies, this piece captivates with its unexpected epilogue in which Evans would summarize everything again.

Editorial note

For the new edition of the album on CD, the recordings of the Empathy session were coupled with the 1966 album A Simple Matter of Conviction , which was created on October 11, 1966. It was Evans' first album with young bassist Eddie Gomez ; Shelly Manne was again the drummer.

The titles

Shelly Manne, circa December 1946.
Photograph by William P. Gottlieb .

Bill Evans: Empathy (Verve 23MJ 3032, CD: 837757-2)

The Washington Twist ( Irving Berlin ) - 6:29
Danny Boy ( Frederick Weatherly ) - 3:44
Let's Go Back To The Waltz (Berlin) - 4:34
With a Song in My Heart ( Richard Rodgers , Lorenz Hart ) - 9:14
Goodbye ( Gordon Jenkins ) - 5:12
I Believe in You ( Frank Loesser ) - 5:54

swell

Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings . 8th edition. Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-14-102327-9 .
Ian Carr , Digby Fairweather , Brian Priestley : Rough Guide Jazz. The ultimate guide to jazz. 1800 bands and artists from the beginning until today. 2nd, expanded and updated edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-01892-X .
Hanns E. Petrik Bill Evans: His life, his music, his records . Oreos, Waakirchen (1989); ISBN 3-923657-23-4 .

Web links

Remarks

↑ The Evans biographer Hanns E. Petrik presents the first meeting of Bill Evans and Shelly Manne differently: After Paul Motian left the trio and Chuck Israels was not available, Creed Taylor had Shelly Manne and Budwig flown in from California for the session . See Petrik, p. 35.
↑ Quoted from Petrik, p. 125.

[1] The Evans biographer Hanns E. Petrik presents the first meeting of Bill Evans and Shelly Manne differently: After Paul Motian left the trio and Chuck Israels was not available, Creed Taylor had Shelly Manne and Budwig flown in from California for the session . See Petrik, p. 35.

[2] Quoted from Petrik, p. 125.