In the Evenings Out There [Import]

Paul Bley | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 7, 2000)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Ecm Import
• ASIN: B000024ARH
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #274,154 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Afterthoughts - Paul Bley

2. Portrait Of A Silence - Gary Peacock

3. Soft Touch - Paul Bley

4. Speak Easy - Gary Peacock/Tony Oxley

5. Interface - Paul Bley/Gary Peacock/Tony Oxley/John Surman

6. Alignment - John Surman

7. Fair Share - Paul Bley/Gary Peacock

8. Article Four - John Surman

9. Married Alive - Paul Bley

10. Spe-cu-lay-ting - Tony Oxley/Paul Bley

11. Tomorrow Today - Gary Peacock

12. Note Police - Paul Bley

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moody and atmospheric, February 5, 2001

By 

Douglas T Martin (Alpharetta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the Evenings Out There (Audio CD)

"In the Evenings Out There" is a companion CD to John Surman's 1992 release "Adventure Playground". On that recording Surman worked with a powerful group - Paul Bley (piano), Gary Peacock (bass), and Tony Oxley (drums) - that was divided into various configurations of duos and trios to accompany Surman. "Evenings" was recorded at the same sessions and released under the names of all four musicians; it usually gets filed under "Bley" since his name is first on the list. And it should be because impressionistic pianist Bley gets the most playing time with four solo works.

Surman gives a solo baritone recital on "Alignment". Tony Oxley and Gary Peacock team up for the powerful and abstact "Speak Easy"; John Surman joins them on bass clarinet for the rumbling "Article Four"; Bley joins that piece five minutes into it. The quartet only plays one other song together, "Interface". Peacock gets two solo pieces, "Portrait of a Silence" and "Tomorrow Today", that show off his skills as a composer and performer. Drummer Tony Oxley, who often sounds like several percussionists playing together at once, gets a sort-of solo piece, "Spec-u-lay-ting" with some discrete colorations from Paul Bley. Peacock and Bley team up for "Fair Share" which starts out with a catchy melody then becomes more subdued and meditative. And that kind of sums up the nature of this recording; songs start off one way and become something else, players enter and exit as needed.

A very quiet recording considering the background of the four musicians. Bley is a longtime interpreter of Ornette Coleman songs - and had the original Ornette Coleman quartet as his back-up band in the 50's. Gary Peacock played with Albert Ayler; John Surman's late 60's trio explored Coltrane's turf. And Tony Oxley has collaborated often with iconoclastic guitarist Derek Bailey. Everybody plays a little more quietly than usual (for Oxley, much more quietly); it's "out there" but it's relaxing as well. Recommended for those who like to listen beyond the mainstream.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a wonderful disc, March 14, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: In the Evenings Out There (Audio CD)

This recording features wonderful works written by each of the four musicians on the album. Some tracks are solo pieces, others have the full ensemble. The music has the depth and integrity you would expect from these excellent players. The recording is fantastic... as is usually the case with ECM releases. Strongly recommended.

5.0 out of 5 stars MUSIC TO CHALLENGE THE MIND AND PLEASE THE SENSES, November 2, 2011

By 

David Keymer "David Keymer" (Modesto CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: In the Evenings Out There (Audio CD)

This extraordinary album brings together four masters of their respective instruments for a wholly satisfying session. The four of them play together on only one cut. The rest of the album, eleven tunes, are either played solo (four by Bley, two by Peacock, two by Surman and one virtually a solo by drummer Oxley, with Bley coming in only at the end) or in duet (Peacock and Oxley, Bley and Peacock).

This is resolutely modernist jazz, interesting and musically rich but never abrasive (one of the virtues I have admired in Bley especially). Bley's modernist credentials are of course impeccable: you can't have played with Ornette Coleman and in the 1961 Fusion trio of Jimmy Giuffre and not earn your spurs. But he has continued his own way, playing piano like no one else -in this album, there are moments that remind one of Tristano but not very much. He's a whole piano player -mixes up chorded passages and single note lines, uses the pedals, strong left hand bass lines and melodies. His melodies are sometimes boppishly hip, other times brooding and romantic. He never lets you down. My wife, not as tolerant of the avant garde as I am (whatever you do, don't try to play her Albert Ayler or Coltrane`s Ascension!), loves Bley because he is (1) melodic, (2) interesting to listen to, and (3) at hearty, a deep Romantic.

What of Bley's compatriots? Peacock, who earned his spurs playing with Ayler and other modernists, is one of the subtlest and most melodic of bass players, with a tone that echoes and throbs as though coming through deep wood. Oxley is a bear. He played with Surman and John McLaughlin on the pioneer jazz-rock fusion record Extrapolation and is one of Cecil Taylor's drummers of choice on the multi-night concert series of piano-drum duets in Germany (1988?). He is one of the most inventive of modern drummers and one of the tastiest, most melodic, deploying an expanded arsenal of percussion that seems to include a hanging metal sheet (scraped occasionally) and something that sounds like hollow coconut shells. When he plays you find yourself listening to him. It doesn't grate on you but you want to hear what he's doing because it's always interesting. As to Surman, his tone is a wonder, and his improvisations as lyrical as they are exploratory. A word more about his tone: I grew up on Gerry Mulligan, a musician whose work I still admire though not as much as I did when I was young. But Mulligan's baritone saxophone is light, a deep-voiced analogue to Lester Young's floating tone on tenor. Surman's tone is richer and deeper than Mulligan's -it doesn't sound like a tenor sax transposed to bari, it sounds like baritone sax, end of the discussion. But there isn't the growl in it that I hear in other baritone players like Pepper Adams or Hamiett Bluiett nor the port-rich thickness I observe in the ensemble and solo work of Harry Carney with the Ellington band. If I were to make an analogy, and I make it cautiously, there is something about his tone -a pristineness--that reminds me of the radically different sound of Jan Garbarek. But where Garbarek's sound resembles wind pushed through a metal bore -piercing but pure, with little or no vibrato--Surman's is woodier, warmer, not at all piercing, but like Garbarek's, there is little vibrato -or rather, controlled vibrato--and a faintly classical sound to his horn. Enough! I'm going off track trying to describe something I can't describe well, or at least not yet. It's enough to say that he is a very appealing soloist, who always rises to the musical occasion. I have never heard him play badly, though there are albums on which he plays better than others.

To sum it up, this a superior jazz album that will please the lovers of the avant garde but prove equally satisfying to those less comfortable with modernism. And since it was recorded at ECM, the sound is impeccable and the piano is properly tuned, of course.