© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
Bill Evans: The Complete Riverside Recordings - Part 1
I am gradually assembling almost forty articles to include in my next book project - A Bill Evans Anthology: Writings on a Jazz Original.
As was the case with my previous compilation about Gerry Mulligan, the work is not a formal biography of Bill. Rather, it stresses major events and developments in Bill’s career as perceived by a number of different writers who specialized in commentary on the subject of Jazz and its makers.
Let’s begin our journey through the music of Bill Evans with this essay which can be found in Orrin Keepnews, The View from Within: Jazz Writings, 1948-1987 [1987].
While we are very fortunate to have owner-producer Orrin Keepnews’ efforts to record Bill on the Riverside Records label, we are equally fortunate that he was a very articulate man who carefully documented each of these recording sessions and, in doing so, left us perhaps the most comprehensive record of Bill early years on the New York Jazz scene [1956-1962].
Frankly, over the many years that I’ve read and reviewed recording notes and commentaries, I’ve always found Orrin’s to be among the most lucid, cogent and coherent.
© Copyright ® Orrin Keepnews/Riverside Records; all rights reserved; the author claims no right of copyright usage.
“An ever-enlarging audience is digging Evans, and with good reason. He is an authoritative pianist with a superb sense of melodic and harmonic invention.”
Richard B. Haddock, 4 ½ stars Down Beat review of Everybody Digs Bill Evans [RLP-1129]
“If there is any doubt that Evans is one of the freshest things to happen to the piano in the last few years, this album should dispel any such feelings. Here is an album with meaning - here is the truth.”
Don DeMicheal, 5 stars Down Beat review of Portrait in Jazz [RLP 1162]
The Bill Evans Sessions - 1984: Part 1
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