Customer Reviews

Further Conversations With Myself

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

To hear the mind of Bill Evans playing against the mind of Bill Evans is always extraordinary. Many of his middle-period Verve recordings suffer from a "boxy" and often tinny piano sound, but getting deeper inside what he did with harmonic possibilities is always an adventure. This is one of the least successful engineered Verve recordings, and their reissue doesn't help much, but he's just so damn good, I've learned to live with it, and just immerse myself in those rich chords and flowing lines. Those who want to hear EXQUISITE-SOUNDING Evans overdubbing himself, with clarity and no tape noise, check out his Warner Bros' 1978 album "New Conversations"!

The review criticizing the tech flaws of the original recording has a point, and Verve should have cleaned this reissue up if possible. But the music shines and Evans fans shouldn't be warned away. My old LP version of this was pressed improperly (out of round), so this acqusition finally lets me hear everything in tune. It's (mostly) a great pleasure.

The attempt by Bill Evans was to create another "Conversations with Myself", his overdub masterpiece wherein he played 4 hands and 6 hands arrangements with himself.

His good perfomances are marred by severe distortion, Verve's recording was over-modulated. The distortion is so bad that it distracts from the perfomance with annoying frequency.

three stars for performance, minus two stars for technical recording.

How can the reviews below quibble, the little quibblers?! Supposed technical deficiencies in the recording have never marred my enjoyment and respect for this record because I WAS LISTENING TO THE MUSIC. So there. Ignore the obsessive engineer types and buy this incredible invention.

This was Bill Evans's second solo outing where he overdubbed his playing with an additional track (previously he had used 2 tracks for a 3-piano effect). You get the feeling from comments Bill makes in the liner notes that he senses what he's doing is somewhat of a gimmick (he says his next effort will be a solo album), but it works well. As with all solo piano performances where the performer disengages himself from the curbing influences of a rhythm section, Bill can sometimes wander all over the place in these performances (the middle section of THE SHADOW OF YOUR SMILE is a good case in point). But usually Evans is quite focused. EMILY and SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN receive excellent interpretations. Most impressive is LITTLE LULU, snappy and delightful, with a string of various endings as if Bill couldn't make up his mind what to conclude with. Evans fans should like this album with few reservations.

Yes, technical drawbacks are obvious, but after all - this is Bill Evans... I don't quite like the idea of this overdubbed records, but as a real Bill Evans fan I'd go for this record as well