Customer Reviews

Sunday at Village Vanguard

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Luckily, this was one of my first purchases when I started buying jazz. After Miles' Kind of Blue, I thought there was nowhere to go but down. But Sunday at the Village Vanguard, along with Evans' Portrait In Jazz and Waltz For Debby prove that there is pristine beauty in this music to be found elsewhere. Listening to this disc, its incredible to hear a trio that is so tight and so loose at once. The band grooves through "Gloria's Step" and "Alice In Wonderland" with incredible ease and class. Evans is a keymaster, but his playing is anything but intimidating. Instead, it invites you in and lulls you. LeFaro's bass playing has such solid swing to it and the sad fact he died ten days after recording this gives the album a bit of a ghostly presence to it that is strangely comforting; just like the ghosts that live in the applause that follows every track or the bit of smoke from the club you think you smell when listening to it. After Kind of Blue, this is the disc I recommend to anyone beginning to taste the wonders of jazz. It souns simple enough on the surface, but holds scores of wonders upon careful listening. When my coffee is brewing on Sunday morning, this album always helps to keep the relaxing weekend spirit alive. That an album so quiet and mellow at its highpoints is so powerful is evident anytime I walk by the Village Vanguard in NY and I feel the Bill Evans chills take over me.

When I was in my first exploratory phase of vintage jazz, during college sometime, I was wandering aimlessly in a record store in Rochester, New York called "The Record Archive". I had NO idea which jazz album to buy (since there are thousands out there). I kindly asked the guy working there which album he would recommend. He said "Bill Evans - Sunday At The Village Vanguard, as long as you don't mind some people talking and glasses clanking in the background." Well, I can never thank that guy enough since this amazing album has become my FAVORITE jazz album ever, out of a collection of hundreds. The interplay between LaFaro and Evans is so unbelievable, it's almost scary! Never have I heard such an almost telepathic communication between two musicians (possibly with the exception of Frank Zappa and Vinnie Colaiuta on "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar"). This album displays the greatest upright bass player IMHO to ever grace the jazz scene, Scott LaFaro. Sadly, LaFaro died just ten days after this recording (which when listening, adds a sort of haunting quality which really cannot be put into words). Evan's piano voicings are just about the most profound and beautiful you are to ever find in any style of music. Please, buy this album! And listen to it over and over. It will change your life. It did mine.

Sunday at the Village Vanguard was actually my 3rd or 4th jazz album ever purchased--unheard, on the basis of print reviews--but it rewarded the risk by opening up my head to the jazz world in such a lovely, exciting, and earthshaking way. I owe so much on a personal level as a listener and as a musician to this album.

The three primary reasons behind my love for this album are Gloria's Step, Jade Visions, and especially Alice in Wonderland. (It's hard not to wave my hands around in clumsy layperson conducting on that last one! :-) You simply cannot describe Bill Evans' exquisite _touch_ that sculpts so much tenderness on that tune in particular, but also just about everything Evans touches. Bassist La Faro really cemented on this record his reputation as a monster, demonstrating that it was possible to maintain a head (melody) almost as as an interactive solo with a piano lead without wrecking the form or playing too stridently there or in his own killer solos. (Incidentally, Motian may seem the weakest link because he's not flashy at all, but he is the steady, unobtrusive pillar on which the magnificence rests, smart enough to dish out sublime atmospheric support on his brushes and stay out of the way of his partners in crime.)

The other tunes on this album are great, too, but the three I listed above just make my world go round. They're likely to do the same to you, too, turning on, if it isn't ignited already, the jazz "light" in your head for all time.

Note: this album's contents were cut to feature La Faro in light of his famous tragic passing ten days later. The same gig also supplied the material for _Waltz for Debby_, an equally excellent album with the same trio that's more indicative of their usual dynamics at that time. Buy both; you need them to salve your soul. :-) To the casual listener with a beginning curiosity about jazz: if you're paying the slightest bit of attention to what's going on, you will realize this disc is the real deal, not lounge lizard music at all. As long as your ears are open, your mind and heart will follow.

There is plenty of ambient audience and waitstaff noise in the background, but the music still cuts through with plenty of quiet power to spare. Some of the passages are so sweet that I scratch my head, wondering how the Vanguard clientele could have been so apparently oblivious at times to the history being made in front of them. This is hands-down five star stuff, and deserves far more than that!

This album is by far one of the best jazz albums I have ever heard. Scott LaFarro's bass is absolutely amazing, I've never heard anything so soothing. This album is highly recommended to all lovers of quality jazz music.

There are cases where other reviewers have already nailed it, but I just have to chime in anyway. This is such a case: the sublime explorations of rhythm and melody that are the Bill Evans Trio's June 25, 1961 Village Vanguard performances.

It should perhaps be stated at the outset that any of these remarks also apply to the album _Waltz for Debby_, which consists of takes culled from the same live sessions as _Sunday at the Village Vanguard_. Definitely get that one concurrently with this. It makes no sense to not have both.

For me, probably the greatest pleasure in this music is listening to Scott LaFaro's bass playing (maybe that's because I'm a bass player, I don't know). The mix has him more or less front and center, even in front of Bill's piano, and Scott's playing is inspired and deserves such treatment. Most people first mention his virtuosic high-speed upper-register runs, but there's also his sonorous double-stops and strummed chords, and just listening to him hold down a single whole note is wonderful. But he never pulls away and "steals the show" overtly, because everything he plays is so rooted in interaction and response with Bill's piano. Listening to LaFaro's strength, sensitivity, and total command of his instrument is just a total joy to behold.

Evans' playing, too, was never better, I think, than on these recordings. His uncanny knack of extracting the essence of tunes and laying down "definitive" versions of them is in full effect here. Paul Motian's drumming seems quite in the background; I hardly ever notice him. In the quiet tunes, for instance, he mostly seems to work the cymbals with brushes to create atmosphere. All in all, he plays an effective supporting role.

My personal favorite moments on these albums are the contemplative, haunting masterworks that are the trilogy of quieter songs: "My Foolish Heart", "I Loves You, Porgy" (which are from _Waltz for Debby_ ) and "My Man's Gone Now", plus Scott LaFaro's "Jade Visions." I'd almost regard it as something like blasphemy for any other group to play that song. It's just so untouchable, and elegiac; as though Scott wrote his own eulogy without knowing it (he was killed in a car accident ten days after these recordings were made). And the "simultaneous improvisation" (I think some critic cooked up that phrase) this group achieves is really special. It's at a level that was never achieved on this trio's two prior studio LPs, _Portrait in Jazz_ and _Explorations_. Obviously, the spirit was just right on June 26, 1961 at the Vanguard, and these three wonderful musicians play brilliantly as an inspired unit. "Solar" is a prime example of this: listen to how the solos run; you can hardly tell at any given moment who's soloing and who's comping.

For most jazz albums, the "alternate takes" you get on the CD releases seem kinda "pesky" to me; I could easily stick with just the master takes without any distractions. But in this case, I'm quite grateful for the alternate takes that round out these discs. It just means even more unique moments of special music by this wonderful trio. I dislike cliches as much as anyone, but hey, desert island discs, for sure, these two. Don't miss out.

Sometimes I listen to this recording and I think to myself, "Why did I stop taking piano lessons at seven years old?" But I am glad that some little boys continued with their lessons; notably Bill Evans.

Bill Evans is so understated...so refined...so elegant that some may think he doesn't have an edge. Not true. His edge is refinement. His playing is never heavy handed, it never overtakes the musical situation, it is so subtle and yet so powerful that you just want more and more...

I also like the different version of each song. It's funnny how a little twist here and a little there can change the whole feel of a song. I remember how my mother, a classically trained pianist, would rehearse for weeks on end on a certain piece of music. She'd play the piece note for note, chord for chord according to what the sheet music had laid down, and then she would do something really interesting after she had learned the piece, she'd throw the music away and played according to the wants and needs of her own soul.

That's the feel I get from this CD. That everyone is playing from their own soul level and yet coming together to be as one for this recording. It's a very powerful recording and it's perfect for early morning writing....mmm...just like what I'm doing now.

I may have given up the piano, but I'm glad I still play at another kind of keyboard.

Peace & Blessings

This album is in a class all it's own. For me, it fits nicely alongside Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue", John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" and "My favorite things", and Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage". This disc is indispensible-don't wait to get it. Bill Evans IS jazz piano in my opinion. I love the work of many others like Tyner, Monk, Powell, and Hancock, but Evans had something about him, something about his sound. And never is his sound more wonderfully on display than it is here.

I have NEVER heard a recording with more 'feeling', more 'atmosphere' to it. This is a live recording of Evans most famous trio in NYC in 1961. Turn it up and listen to the chatter of the crowd in the background and the tinkle of glasses and silverware. Breathtakingly beautiful. LaFaro, on bass, shows himself to be a complete master of his instrument and a great songwriter as well (Gloria's Step). JUST AS GOOD-Evans' album recorded alongside this one called "Waltz for Debby". Yeah, you should buy it too.

Alright, alright, it's all been said...but the reviews (including this one) can't do this CD justice. As a bassist for almost 30 years, I have to say that there is no other album that has instilled a sense of awe in me as this one has. Scott LaFaro was just the best, and would have been universally recognized as such had he been around a little longer. But we know, don't we, that HE was the one that removed the label of "supporting role" from the instrument. HE is the one who is more highly imitated in chamber jazz than any other. And of the too few recordings of this famous "first trio", this is the one that ties together all that Bill Evans was trying to accomplish as the leader of a trio. For that, this CD should not only occupy the same shelf space as "Kind of Blue", but should be placed ahead of it (blasphemy to some, I know) in listening order. If you don't have this one, even if you have "Kind of Blue", your jazz collection is incomplete. Stop reading and just listen!

These recordings from the June 25, 1961, sets at the Village Vanguard have become legendary both because they solidified Bill Evans' stature as a paramount improvisor in jazz and because Scott LaFaro's bass playing moved the instrument up a quantum level. LaFaro entered the company of Jimmy Blanton and Charles Mingus with these recordings. Evans and LaFaro complement one another the way that Ellington and Blanton fed each other years earlier. The solo in take 3 of LaFaro's composition "Gloria's Step" the second track on this disc expands the boundaries of bass playing. In Gershwin's "My Man's Gone Now" Evans explores at great length all the minor and modal possibilities of the melody leading to another extravagant LaFaro solo. Evans continues excursions in modal improvisation in Miles Davis' "Solar" with LaFaro and Paul Motian supporting. Spurred by Motian's brushwork, LaFaro's extended solo proceeds at breakneck speed. Evans' "Alice in Wonderland" is nothing like the cartoon theme--he swings the simple melody, converting it into an improvisational wonderland of his own--a gently lyrical and liquid expose of the song's possibilities--with rich interplay among the trio members. Evans launches Cole Porter's "All of You" to an etherial sphere with delicate introductory phrases and then turns the song inside out. Led by Evans' robust exposition, the trio swings this ballad with strong solos (listen to LaFaro underpinned by Motian again on these tracks) and ensemble work. Motian's solo is particularly effective, a nice blend of explosion and subtlety. The disc concludes with two versions of LaFaro's "Jade Visions," a further virtuoso display of bass technique and improvisation.

Do not buy this version of SUNDAY AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD! Buy the 20-bit remastered version.

What infuriates me about this version is that Riverside, in its infinite wisdom, chose to include alternate takes of four songs ("Gloria's Step," Alice in Wonderland," "All of You" and "Jade Visions) and sequence them back-to-back with the previously released versions. Sure, it's great to have bonus tracks, but let's not violate the original sequence of one of jazz music's most beloved albums! Save the bonus tracks for the end or put them on a separate disc. Duh.

Get a clue, Riverside! You've painted a moustache on the Mona Lisa.