Customer Reviews

Getting Sentimental

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This date with Philly Joe Jones and Michael Moore -- who was auditioning for the bass slot that night, and got it -- is pretty much what you'd expect. Evans circa 1978 lacked the freshness and spontaneity of his earlier work with bassists Scott LaFaro and Chuck Israels, and also the striving and intensity of the work just before he died. Moore is fine here, if a little tentative, which is understandable considering it was the first night he had played with the trio.

While it's nice to hear Evans with a more fiery drummer than those in his later trios, and Bill recorded the brilliant sessions with the great Philly Joe released on the "Interplay" and "Loose Blues" CDs, the drummer is a bit lead-footed here. What makes Philly Joe's heavy-handed playing even more regrettable is that he is far and away the most prominent musician in the mix. Sadly, this album should be called "Philly Joe Jones with Bill Evans Somewhere Off to the Side and the Occasionally Audible Michael Moore." The piano is flat-sounding and tinny. I doubt Evans would have approved this for release on that basis. Frankly, I have several Evans bootlegs with better sound.

I don't mean to bum out Mike Harris, the Evans fan and scholar who recorded this gig. He performed a valuable service for Evans completists. But Fantasy/Milestone records should be made aware that they're getting close to unacceptable levels of sound quality for a commercial release with this disc.

"Aberration of Starlight" a review of the Bill Evans Trio recording _Getting Sentimental_ (Berkeley, CA: Milestone Records, 2003) (MCD-9336-2) recorded at the Village Vanguard, New York, NY, 15 January 1978 by Mike Harris. Bill Evans, piano; Michael Moore, double bass; `Philly' Joe Jones, drums. 14 tracks; TT 73:19; AAD / Stereo; "all selections previously unreleased"

This surreptitious recording was made by Mike Harris, whose other `secret' recordings of the pianist in performance between 1966 and 1975 at New York's Village Vanguard were issued as _Bill Evans: The Secret Sessions_ (Milestone, 1996, 8 CDs boxed). It was another Sunday at the Village Vanguard and bassist Michael Moore was the last of several bassists who throughout the past week had auditioned for a position in the trio. George Mraz and Rufus Reid were two other bassists who had auditioned. It is not a good recording technically with noticeable drop outs, thud-like drums, crashing cymbals, and muffled bass. Also, the re-mastering seems to have overlooked the need for concert A-440 pitch - everything seems sharp. This CD would be of interest to anyone who wants to know what the Evans trio sounded like between `Eddie Gomez- Eliot Zigmund and Marc Johnson-Joe LaBarbara.

Both Evans and Jones rush the tempos on `I Should Care' and `I'm Getting Sentimental over You'. Jones plays loudly throughout overwhelming Moore. With ballads like `Quiet Now' and `The Peacocks' the trio is more successful (Jones' brush work was always superb). On `Song from M*A*S*H (Suicide is Painless)' the drums are acoustically out of balance, probably due to the location of Harris's recording machine, but then again probably also because Philly Joe is not in full control of tempos or volume. Moore's playing is conservative with good intonation and thoughtful melodic lines, appropriate for an audition. His best performance is on `Gary's Theme'.

We learn from Peter Pettinger's Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), a chronological review and analysis of the recordings of the pianist, that following the departures of Eddie Gomez and drummer Eliot Zigmund in the fall of 1977, Bill Evans was without a trio for the first time in over a decade. Despite having secured the bassist chair in the trio, Michael Moore himself reports in the program notes to this recording that after five months he resigned disenchanted with the pianist's shift toward what Moore saw as a fascination with fast tempos and lots of notes.

In January 1978, these (then relatively recent) Evans `non-trio' LPs were available for fans to buy:

* Intuition (Evans-Gomez duo) - recorded November 1974
* Tony Bennett-Bill Evans Album (duo) - June 1975
* Montreux III (Evans-Gomez duo) - July 1975
* Alone (Again) - solo - December 1975
* Quintessence (with K. Burrell, R. Brown, H. Land, `Philly' Joe) - May 1976
* Together (Again) - Evans and Bennett duo - September 1976
* Crosscurrents (with W. Marsh, L. Konitz, Gomez, Zigmund) - March 1977

Bill Evans was searching for something new - duo, solo, quintet - in spite of his always challenging trios. In the end, he returned to his tried and true trio format with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbara. It was this last Evans trio that will be compared most often to his first with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. _Getting Sentimental_, both technically and artistically, is an aberration of the starlight clarity and inventiveness of Evans' other recorded trio accomplishments.

This is one CD I wished I'd never bought .
It should not be released as a Bill Evans album at all .
Bill is on it , but from a distance .

Buyers get a great recording of Philly Joe's drums .
However , the album is not sold as that , which rightfully it should be .

To hear Bill and Philly Joe to better effect , buy the live CD
called " California Here I Come " - that fulfils the promise that this CD denies you .

I sold my copy .
Do not buy it unless you like the drums - a lot .

The audio should be enough to disqualify this recording for any but Evans' most devoted followers. For the latter, I would be hesitant to be overly harsh on either Evans or Philly Joe. Michael Moore was an intelligent player, a real student of the instrument, but he was as far removed from the Evans' Romantic aesthetic as a player could be. I recall catching him live once with Ruby Braff and being thoroughly bored by his bass support. The beat was flat, offering no propulsion whatsoever; the note choices were uninspired, rarely providing tension and release principles; the solos were equally unengaging, devoid of risk-taking. The music simply didn't breathe, didn't have life or refect the spontaneity and freedom so essential to this music.

Although I was far from an Eddie Gomez supporter, I can see where his overly busy, overly long solos provided Bill with temporary respite, allowing him to prepare for yet another grandiose quest for the holy grail that was the object of each performance, of far greater importance to someone with Evans' ideals about art and the role of the artist than some rigid notion about keeping everything in the center of the beat. If Evans was "overplaying" on this occasion, for whose "underplaying" was he attempting to make up? If he was reluctant to reign in Philly Joe, why should he inflict his own sense of constraint upon another musician, moreover one that he liked?