New Vanguard 209

Bill Evans Trio - Turn Out The Stars: The Final Village Vanguard Recordings, June 1980 {6CD Box Set Warner 9 45925-2 rel 1996}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.87 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 954 Mb
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© 1980, 1996 Warner Bros. | 9 45925-2
Jazz / Post Bop / Modal Music / Piano

Just three months before his death, pianist BIll Evans was extensively recorded at the Village Vanguard. Originally, one or two LPs were to be released featuring his brilliant new trio (with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbera), but after the innovative pianist's death, the project was stalled for over 15 years. Finally, when Warner Bros. got around to it, a definitive six-CD box set was released (although unfortunately in limited-edition form). Evans sounded quite energized during his last year, Johnson was developing quickly as both an accompanist and a soloist, and the interplay by the trio members (with subtle support from LaBarbera) sometimes bordered on the telepathic. The playing throughout these consistently inventive performances ranks up there with the Evans-Scott LaFaro-Paul Motian trio of 20 years earlier.

This is a great reminder of what the best 1980s pop/rock sounded like. It includes most of Pat Benatar's hits, with the unfortunate omission of I Need A Lover, the passionate melodic churner from 1979. It also includes her best album tracks like the poignant Hell Is For Children but her excellent version of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights is missing. Benatar specialised in powerful rock numbers with strong power chords and catchy hooks, delivered to full effect in her belting voice, like Heartbreaker, Hit Me With Your Best Shot and Love Is A Battlefield. In this sense Benatar was something like a female Meat Loaf and in fact not too far from Bonnie Tyler. But there were also the quiter songs in a more tender voice, like the synth-driven We Live For Love, a pop classic. With 18 tracks, this is a better compilation than Best Shots with its 15 tracks.

Recorded live at New York’s singular downtown nightspot in late 2018, Anatomy of Angels finds Jon Batiste, pianist and bandleader of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, in a setting wholly different from his 2018 vocal outing Hollywood Africans. The album faithfully follows the arc of a live set as Batiste, bassist Phil Kuehn, and drummer Joe Saylor settle in for some deep trio exploration up top with “Creative” and “Dusk Train to Doha.” The format evolves as Lake Street Dive’s Rachael Price takes the stage for a vocal-piano duet on the old ballad “The Very Thought of You.” Then, with hearty and infectious audience approval, four horns join the fray on Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight” (Giveton Gelin and Jon Lampley on trumpets, Tivon Pennicott and Patrick Bartley on tenor and alto saxes respectively). The horns stay on for the closing title track, a nearly 13-minute journey through dazzling tempo shifts and solos that are by turns cathartic and gorgeously lyrical. Batiste’s TV gig, great as it is, probably can’t beat the feeling of this kind of high-level invention, on jazz’s most revered bandstand.

Portrait In Jazz (1960). The first of two studio albums by the Bill Evans-Scott LaFaro-Paul Motian trio (both of which preceded their famous engagement at the Village Vanguard), this Portrait in Jazz reissue contains some wondrous interplay, particularly between pianist Evans and bassist LaFaro, on the two versions of "Autumn Leaves." Other than introducing Evans' "Peri's Scope," the music is comprised of standards, but the influential interpretations were far from routine or predictable at the time. LaFaro and Motian were nearly equal partners with the pianist in the ensembles and their versions of such tunes as "Come Rain or Come Shine," "When I Fall in Love," and "Someday My Prince Will Come" (which preceded Miles Davis' famous recording by a couple years) are full of subtle and surprising creativity. A gem…