Undercurrent (album)

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Undercurrent
Studio album by Bill Evans and Jim Hall

Publication
(s)

August 1962

admission

April 24, 1962 - May 14, 1962

Label (s) United Artists Records
Blue Note Records (Re-Release)

Format (s)

LP , CD

Genre (s)

Cool jazz

Title (number)

6 (LP) / 10 (CD)

running time

30:12 / 53:06 (CD)

occupation

production

Alan Douglas

Studio (s)

Sound Makers, New York City

chronology
Nirvana
(1962) 		Undercurrent Intermodulation
(1966)
Cover photo of Weeki Wachee springs (photograph by Toni Frissell , originally taken for Harper's Bazaar , 1947)

Undercurrent is a 1,962-rehearsed studio album of jazz pianist Bill Evans and jazz guitarist Jim Hall . It was the first joint album by the two musicians. Undercurrent was released by United Artists Records in the summer of 1962 and was re-released on CD by Blue Note Records in 1988 . The album cover illustrates the title Undercurrent and shows the underwater photography of a woman in a white dress in the sources of the Weeki Wachee River in Hernando County , Florida, ( Weeki Wachee springs ) by Toni Frissell , 1947 originated. Evans and Hall worked together again as a duo in April / May 1966 for the follow-up album Intermodulation (Verve).

History of the album

The pianist's recordings with guitarist Jim Hall took place less than a year after the tragic end of the first Bill Evans trio, when his bassist Scott LaFaro had a fatal accident shortly after the Village Vanguard Sessions ( Waltz for Debby ) . In the first half of 1962 Evans had taken up only a few recording opportunities, as an accompanist in February with Tadd Dameron and in April 1962 as a soloist and in two formations around Benny Golson (including Freddie Hubbard and Eric Dolphy , Just Jazz ). During this time, even before Evans signed his contract with Verve under the management of Helen Keane , United Artists producer Alan Douglas brought the pianist together with Jim Hall "to record a special album." The two musicians had previously only worked together in the studio on the third-stream projects Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) and Jazz Abstractions (1960).

The sessions took place on April 24, 1962 and May 14, 1962; The sound engineer was Bill Schwartau. In between, Evans was in the studio with his second trio, which now included Chuck Israels and Paul Motian , and with flautist Herbie Mann to finish the recordings for his album Nirvana , which had begun in 1961 . A few days later, from May 17, 1962, he recorded the LP Moon Beams with his trio .

Review of the album

source rating
Allmusic
All about jazz
Penguin Guide to Jazz

In his biography of Evans, Hanns A. Petrik emphasized "the wonderful balance in the game of two remarkable jazz individualists". "The fine balance of the music shows the extraordinary feeling of both artists, who work on an exemplary entangled musical filigree : duo music of the highest quality." As the highlights of the album, the author describes their version of the standard " My Funny Valentine " as "one of the most successful duo improvisations in jazz history. The climax of the piece is an enormously swinging middle section in which Jim Hall's guitar takes on the role of a double bass marching in 4/4 time and Evans finds an elegant improvisation. "

Cook and Morton gave Undercurrent the top grade and emphasized that the duo album was a “masterpiece of subtle shading , floating melancholy and - perhaps most surprisingly - heavy swing ; the latter quality is most evident in the partly full-blooded I'm Getting Sentimental Over You . But the almost hallucinatory ballads Dream Gypsy and Romain “ stayed in my mind .

Scott Yanow describes the album in Allmusic as "recommendable" and awarded it the second highest award. At the first of the two duo meetings between Evans and Hall, he remarked that the album was “ introspective and harmoniously demanding, rooted in swinging bebop .” There was “a greater variety than expected in this great game (...) with echoes of classical music. "

Rolling Stone magazine voted the album at number 34 on its list of The 100 Best Jazz Albums in 2013 .

title

Page 1:

  1. My Funny Valentine - 5:19
  2. I Hear a Rhapsody (Jack Baker, George Fragos, Dick Gasparre) - 4:35
  3. Dream Gypsy (Judith Veveers) - 4:30

Page 2:

  1. Romain (Jim Hall) - 5:18
  2. Skating in Central Park ( John Lewis ) - 5:17
  3. Darn That Dream ( Eddie DeLange , Jimmy Van Heusen ) - 5:05

CD bonus tracks:

  1. Stairway to the Stars ( Matty Malneck , Mitchell Parish , Frank Signorelli ) - 5:36
  2. I'm Getting Sentimental Over You ( George Bassman , Ned Washington ) - 4:13
  3. My Funny Valentine (Alternate Take) ( Richard Rodgers , Lorenz Hart ) - 6:52
  4. Romain (Alternate Take) - 5:22

Tracks 3, 5 and 6 were written at the first recording session, the others at the studio session in May 1962.

Editorial notes

The original album was released as a United Artists LP (UAJ 140032) without the bonus tracks that were included on the CD released on Blue Note Records (Blue Note B1 90583).

literature

  • Hanns E. Petrik: Bill Evans - His Life, His Music, His Records , OREOS Verlag, 1989

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The album The Vibes Are On , recorded in February 1962 with the second trio in Birdland , is a blackmail .
  2. ↑ See Bill Evans Discography (jazzdisco.org)
  3. ↑ a b c cf. Hanns E. Petrik: Bill Evans - His life, his music, his records , OREOS Verlag, 1989, p. 121.
  4. ↑ These recordings were made for Riverside Records . See Bill Evans Discography
  5. ^ A b Scott Yanow : Review of the album in Allmusic
  6. ↑ Review by David Cohen on allaboutjazz.com (accessed October 24, 2017)
  7. ^ A b Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings . 8th edition. Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-14-102327-9 , p. 481.
  8. ↑ Rolling Stone: The 100 Best Jazz Albums . Retrieved November 16, 2016.

Web links