Sunday at the Village Vanguard

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Sunday at the Village Vanguard
Waltz for Debby
Live album by Bill Evans

Publication
(s)

1961

Label (s) Riverside

Format (s)

2 LP / 2 CD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

20th

occupation

production

Orrin Keepnews

Studio (s)

Recorded live at Village Vanguard , New York City

chronology
Explorations (1960) Sunday at the Village Vanguard
Waltz for Debby 		Undercurrent (1962)

The two albums Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby with Bill Evans , Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian contain live recordings from June 25, 1961 from the New York jazz club Village Vanguard .

History of the recordings

After the recordings of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue in March and April 1959, Bill Evans felt that a piano trio was the most suitable form of expression for his creative ideas. So from the middle of the year he was looking for the right partners for bass and drums. Bill found it in the young bassist Scott LaFaro and the drummer Paul Motian, whom he had met a few years earlier in Jerry Wald's sextet .

After initial musical communication difficulties - LaFaro tried a guitar-like sound - the trio recorded the record Portrait in Jazz in October 1959 . They achieved a further increase in their musical understanding in the course of 1960 - only there are only bootlegs from this time, recorded in the Birdland Jazz Club. In February 1961, the producer of Riverside Records Orrin Keepnews had the record record Explorations . This was, so to speak, the preparation for the recordings that would be the climax for the trio four and a half months later.

The concert at the Village Vanguard

The live recordings in the New York jazz club Village Vanguard were made at the end of a two-week engagement; Today they are considered to be the milestones of modern jazz and a role model for countless piano trio formations (the best known is probably the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette ). The critic Ira Gitler wrote, under the direct impression of the concert: “ The music of the trio enveloped me with a magical aura. I took off so much that my consciousness seemed to dissolve into sounds - head and body became one huge ear, the music flowed through me and Bill's remark that it [the music] was nothing but feeling has never become clearer to me. "

The tremendous impression that the recordings made on the jazz scene of the time resulted from the intuitive interplay that the three musicians achieved at the zenith of their work together. Scott LaFaro had developed tremendously technically and musically during his two years with Bill Evans. But the euphoria came to an abrupt end ten days later: LaFaro had a fatal accident in his car on the morning of July 6th. The loss hit Bill Evans so badly that he withdrew from the scene for several months and was only persuaded to start a record production again in October.

review

Thom Jurek wrote in Allmusic about Sunday at the Village Vanguard , to which he awarded the highest grade: “While Waltz for Debby is in retrospect something like a showcase for Evans' brilliant, subtle and wide-ranging piano playing”, this album is “an homage to that Genius and the performance of LaFaro ”. Jurek points out in his review of the following Waltz for Debby that it shows Evans as an “intense romantic”, “shamelessly emotional”, which is evident to a large extent in My Foolish Heart and Detour Ahead . His impressionistic style of playing in its harmonious architecture starts from the middle registers and goes deep into sound spaces in which he creates numerous melodic fragments at the same time. As a sideman he plays in milestones with rhythmic intensity. The interplay of the trio works particularly well in My Romance ; Motian's work with the broom is excellent here, rapid and elegant, and LaFaro controls the dynamics of the piece with his feather-light pizzicato playing and lets Evans' deeply emotional statements swing effortlessly. Of the many recordings that Evans released, the two Vanguard albums and Explorations are "the ultimate expressions of his legendary trio."

Even Richard Cook and Brian Morton gave the album in the Penguin Guide to Jazz the highest score (including additional "Crown"): It is [compared to the previous albums] "founded with an additional sense of discovery, as if the musicians were suddenly aware that they celebrated the peak of their achievements. "

Brian Priestley highlighted Waltz for Debby in the extensive Evans discography and mentioned the looseness in the musical development of the trio in the eighteen months since the recording of Portrait in Jazz

Rolling Stone magazine chose Sunday at the Village Vanguard in its list of The 100 Best Jazz Albums at # 65, while Waltz for Debby was at # 72.

Edition history

The published recordings contain the pieces from the afternoon and evening concerts; In some cases, some pieces were even played three times in the 5 sets.

After Scott LaFaro's death, the record "Sunday at the Village Vanguard Featuring Scott LaFaro" (Riverside RLP 9376) was released. Evans deliberately selected pieces that the bassist who had crashed into the game had written ( Gloria's Step and Jade Visions ) or on which longer solos can be heard from him. Evans thus dedicated this record specifically to his deceased friend.

Shortly afterwards, the other titles of the concert appeared on the record "Waltz for Debby" (Riverside RLP 9399). The alternate takes, which were only published later, were missing from the original records.

The jazz label "Riverside Records" was given up in 1962 after the death of the label boss Bill Grauer. His partner Orrin Keepnews continued under the Milestone Records label . As a result, the recordings then appeared on Milestone , but under the title "The Village Vanguard Sessions" (Milestone M-7002). The remaining alternate takes were later released on "More from the Village Vanguard" (Milestone M-9125).

When it was re-released in CD format, the alternate takes were integrated into the records that were initially released (even if this does not correspond to the timing of the afternoon and evening concerts). The CDs were then released by Original Jazz Classics under the old titles Sunday at the Village Vanguard (RLP 9376 / OJCCD 140-2) and Waltz for Debby (RLP 9399 / OJCCD 210-2). Only the CD collection The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 , which appeared in 2005, makes the concerts in their sequence comprehensible on 3 CDs and also contains the stage announcements and a failed beginning of Gloria's Step (take 1).

The CD At the Village Vanguard (R 60-017) is a sampler that summarizes the most important pieces on one CD.

The pieces

"Sunday at the Village Vanguard"

  1. Gloria's Step (take 2) - 6:05 minutes (LaFaro)
  2. My Man's Gone Now - 6:21 ( DuBose Heyward , George Gershwin )
  3. Solar - 8:56 ( Miles Davis )
  4. Alice In Wonderland (take 2) - 8:32 ( Sammy Fain , Bob Hilliard )
  5. All Of You (take 2) - 8:20 ( Cole Porter )
  6. Jade Visions (take 2) - 3:46 (LaFaro)
  7. Gloria's Step (take 3) - 6:55
  8. Alice In Wonderland (take 1) - 9:01
  9. All Of You (take 1) - 8:05
  10. All Of You (take 3) - 5:06
  11. Jade Visions (take 1)

Tracks 7-11 are bonus tracks on later releases.

"Waltz for Debby"

  1. My Foolish Heart - 4:56 ( Ned Washington , Victor Young )
  2. Waltz for Debby (take 2) - 6:54 (Evans)
  3. Waltz for Debby (take 1) - 6:47
  4. Detour Ahead (take 2) - 7:35 (Syndney Carter / Walter Ellis / Johnny Frigo)
  5. Detour Ahead (take 1) - 7:18
  6. My Romance (take 1) - 7:11 ( Rodgers and Hart )
  7. My Romance (take 2) - 7:11
  8. Some Other Time - 5:02 (Comden, Green, Bernstein)
  9. Milestones - 6:37 (Miles Davis)
  10. Porgy ( I Loves You, Porgy ) - 5:57 ( George Gershwin / Ira Gershwin )

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hanns E. Petrik: Bill Evans - His music, his life, his records . Oreos (Collection Jazz), 1989.
  2. ↑ Review of Thom Jurek's album Sunday at the Village Vanguard at Allmusic (English). Retrieved May 22, 2011.
  3. ↑ Review of the album Waltz for Debby by Thom Jurek at Allmusic (English). Retrieved May 22, 2011.
  4. ↑ Richard Cook & Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD 6th Edition. ISBN 0-14-051521-6
  5. ^ Ian Carr , Digby Fairweather , Brian Priestley : Rough Guide Jazz. The ultimate guide to jazz music. 1700 artists and bands from the beginning until today. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1999, ISBN 3-476-01584-X , p. 199.
  6. ↑ Rolling Stone: The 100 Best Jazz Albums . Retrieved November 16, 2016.