Bill Evans Trio Exploration

Bill Evans At Town Hall (1966). This LP is a superior effort by Bill Evans and his trio in early 1966. The last recording by longtime bassist Chuck Israels (who had joined the Trio in 1962) with Evans (the tastefully supportive drummer Arnold Wise completes the group), this live set features the group mostly performing lyrical and thoughtful standards. Highlights include "I Should Care," "Who Can I Turn To," and "My Foolish Heart." The most memorable piece, however, is the 13-and-a-half-minute "Solo: In Memory of His Father," an extensive unaccompanied exploration by Evans that partly uses a theme that became "Turn Out the Stars"…

Bill Evans' 1963 album Plays the Theme from The V.I.P.s and Other Great Songs features the legendary pianist eschewing his more introspective sound for a commercial pop approach. Working with an orchestral background courtesy of conductor/arranger Claus Ogerman (uncredited here), Evans delves into songs by such writers as Henry Mancini, Johnny Mercer, Elmer Bernstein, Miklós Rózsa, and others. While the album has more to do with light easy listening than deep harmonic jazz exploration, there is much to enjoy here for fans of jazz-inflected '60s pop.

Bill Evans' 1963 album Plays the Theme from The V.I.P.s and Other Great Songs features the legendary pianist eschewing his more introspective sound for a commercial pop approach. Working with an orchestral background courtesy of conductor/arranger Claus Ogerman (uncredited here), Evans delves into songs by such writers as Henry Mancini, Johnny Mercer, Elmer Bernstein, Miklós Rózsa, and others. While the album has more to do with light easy listening than deep harmonic jazz exploration, there is much to enjoy here for fans of jazz-inflected '60s pop.

Dan Tepfer — whom New York magazine dubbed “one of the moment’s most adventurous and relevant musicians” — has criss-crossed the globe over the past several years. The broad success of the pianist’s 2011 album Goldberg Variations / Variations — an improvisational exploration of J.S. Bach’s masterpiece — led to packed concerts from London’s Wigmore Hall, Chicago’s Ravinia Festival and SF Jazz in San Francisco to events in Berlin, Prague, Tokyo, Vancouver and Manhattan’s Le Poisson Rouge, with The New York Times declaring the latter performance “riveting and inspiring.” Tepfer followed that with Small Constructions, a studio-savvy 2013 album with reed player Ben Wendel, as well as his ongoing collaboration with sax icon Lee Konitz.

Four months after winning his second Grammy Award in the R&B category for Black Radio 2, pianist Robert Glasper re-assembles the acoustic jazz trio that played on his first two Blue Note recordings…