New Jazz Conceptions

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New Jazz Conceptions
Studio album by Bill Evans

Publication
(s)

1956

Label (s) Riverside Records

Format (s)

LP, CD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

11/12

running time

41:52 (CD)

occupation

production

Bill Grauer , Orrin Keepnews

Studio (s)

New York City

chronology
- New Jazz Conceptions Everybody Digs Bill Evans
(1957)

New Jazz Conceptions is the debut album by jazz pianist Bill Evans , recorded on September 18 and 27, 1956 in New York City and released on Riverside Records .

The album

At the time of the New Jazz Conceptions recordings , the twenty-seven year old pianist Bill Evans was only involved in a few albums by guitarist Dick Garcia , in George Russell's Jazz Workshop and in recordings by clarinetist Tony Scott , whose band he had been a member of since the summer of 1956. Orrin Keepnews , the founder of the young label Riverside Records , which so far has only had some success with Thelonious Monk's recordings, got a call from guitarist Mundell Lowe , who is a friend of Evans, who wrote a demo tape for him and Bill Grauer with recordings of the hitherto unknown Wanted to play pianists. Keepnews didn't want to get involved at first, but later said: “But we listened to Bill Evans and immediately noticed, despite the telephone distortion, that Mundell's young friend was something special. After that, I heard Bill Evans in clubs several times - he mostly played with Tony Scott. Eventually we gave him a contract - we used the usual pre-printed union forms and initially only paid the guaranteed minimum fee ”.

Evans' first recording session for Riverside was on September 18-27, 1956; it was a trio of Evans himself, bassist Teddy Kotick and drummer Paul Motian , which Evans' trios would belong to until 1962. They recorded eleven pieces, some of which show the influence of Evans' idols at the time George Russell and Tony Scott, a jazz standards program made up of Cole Porter , Rodgers - Hart and Robin / Rainger compositions such as "I Love You", "My Romance" and "Easy Living"; George Shearing's “Conception” and Tadd Dameron's “Our Delight” came from the post- bebop repertoire . Bill Evans brought in four original compositions, "Five", "Displacement", "No Cover, No Minimum" and "Waltz for Debby". The last two pieces in particular - in further formations - should then be part of Evans' long-standing repertoire. The Evans biographer Hanns E. Petrik wrote: “They were compositions that heralded a wide artistic range in structure and character - the solo piece“ Waltz for Debby ”, which lasted only one minute and sixteen seconds, was particularly memorable. He had dedicated it to his little niece - it was to become world famous and his most famous composition ”. Despite the range of hard bop , blues , ballads and echoes of the Third Stream , “Evans' originality was only marginally noticeable. One experienced a still immature, if technically excellent pianist. (...) In spite of the restrictions, the first LP already showed hints of that typical melancholy that later determined many of his records, particularly recognizable in the briefly touched ballads that are presented without an improvisation part ”.

As producer Orrin Keepnews later said, the record initially had little impact on the jazz scene; Riverside only sold 800 copies in the first year. The long-playing record was taken very seriously by Evans' colleagues; After the recordings appeared in December 1956 until May 1958 (when he joined the Miles Davis Band), the pianist was to participate in a total of 15 recording sessions, for example with Don Elliott , Eddie Costa , again with Tony Scott and finally with George Russell, Charles Mingus ( East Coasting ) and Jimmy Knepper ( Idol of the Flies ).

Rating of the album

Tom Jurek rates the album in the All Music Guide with four stars and emphasizes that Bill Evans' debut shows the differences compared to contemporary pianists influenced by Bud Powell . As early as 1956, over a year before his membership in the Miles Davis Sextet, Evans had trained his own voice and a lyrical swinging style. The author particularly emphasizes the original version of his classic composition “Waltz for Debby”, which Evans performs solo in contrast to the other numbers. New Jazz Conceptions is a strong start to an impressive career. The evaluation of the album in the Penguin Guide to Jazz is somewhat more reserved ; Richard Cook and Brian Morton , who only gave the album three stars, see New Jazz Conceptions as “a nice, quite good set; it is just taking up a talent in his early days ”. Hanns E. Petrik sees Evans' first LP as "a good musical mixture that included standard pieces and his own compositions and served the common style areas (...) in a clever way". The ballad "Waltz for Debby" is outstanding.

The titles

Richard Rodgers (left) and Lorenz Hart (right) (1936), they made "My Romance"
  • Bill Evans Trio - New Jazz Conceptions (Riverside RLP 12-223)
  1. I Love You ( Cole Porter ) - 3:53
  2. Five (Bill Evans) - 4:00
  3. I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good) ( Duke Ellington , Paul Francis Webster ) - 1:37
  4. Conception ( George Shearing ) - 4:44
  5. Easy Living ( Leo Robin , Ralph Rainger ) - 3:51
  6. Displacement (Evans) - 2:34
  7. Speak Low ( Kurt Weill , Ogden Nash ) - 5:08
  8. Waltz for Debby (Evans, Gene Lees ) - 1:18
  9. Our Delight ( Tadd Dameron ) - 4:44
  10. My Romance ( Richard Rodgers , Lorenz Hart ) - 1:59
  11. No Cover, No Minimum take 2 (Evans) - 7:31

The 1987 CD release of Fantasy / OJC OJCCD 025-2 added the alternate take “No Cover, No Minimum” take 1 .

literature

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Keepnews, 1980 in an interview with Contemporary Keyboard . Quoted from Petrick, p. 18.
  2. ↑ On October 18th, the three tracks: "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)", "Waltz For Debby" and "My Romance" were recorded.
  3. ↑ See Petrik, p. 18.
  4. ↑ Quoted from Petrick, p. 18.
  5. ↑ a b quotation from Petrik, p. 88.
  6. ↑ Quoted from Cook / Morton, 6th edition, p. 480.