jeudi 21 Aoû 2008, 15h20m

Bill Evans Trio – Sunday at the Village Vanguard

The facts (source: Allmusic.com):
Sunday at the Village Vanguard (and Waltz for Debby, its companion album) is one of the most important piano trio albums in history and a desert-island choice among many musicians. It marks the final appearance of bassist Scott LaFaro with Evans and drummer Paul Motian. LaFaro demonstrated a concept of jazz bass playing here that shattered traditional limits to how interactive and contrapuntal a bassline could be without totally abandoning its supportive function. He also soloed with unparalleled imagination and technical facility. The album also showed how Evans had refined an approach to solo improvisation in which the pulse was not as obvious as it had been in swing and bop approaches. And his extraordinarily high standards required that each improvised melodic idea be extensively developed, resulting in more continuity and pacing than was common to any previous modern style. The influence of what LaFaro and Evans laid out here was still being felt in the 1990s.

What I think about it:
If you want me to bore me to death, simply play this album. I’m sure this is a fantastic jazz album for jazz lovers, but for me this music is exactly the reason why I don’t trust jazz.

Someone decided to add some extra tracks to the cd release (hey, what an original idea). So, why not put extra takes of four songs on the album? And hey, why not put every take after the corresponding song? That makes it easier to compare, right?

After two listens I decided the music was too boring this way, and I thought I would solve this by not playing the bonus tracks. Surprisingly, that didn’t change the listening experience. The music still sounded as one big long song, and deleting the songs only made the listening time shorter.

Sure, Bill Evans plays the piano well, but most of the time you hear the bass. Sure, Scott LaFaro can play the bass well, but minutes filled with string plucking can’t keep my attention. It is so boring I just want the music to stop, so it is quite useless as background music either.

I could give this music another try, but I don’t think that after the 15th listen, suddenly a miracle will take place. Guess this is just way too hard for me. I don’t hear the exciting improvisations or interactions. I just get really annoyed. Too bad…

(Even hoop: the intro of My Man's Gone Now)