01 If You Could See Me Know 5:49
02 Bill's Hit Tune 7:14
03 Knit For Mary F. 6:01
04 Laurie 7:01
05 I Do It For Your Love 5:39
06 My Foolish Heart 3:53
07 Letter To Evan 4:54
08 Polka Dots And Moonbeams 5:45
09 Like Someone In Love 5:56
10 Your Story 3:41
11 Tiffany - Time Remembered 10:14
12 Turn Out the Stars 5:26

Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz series: Bill Evans

A historic document is the recording of a radio broadcast of Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz series with Bill Evans (The Jazz Alliance 1978, reissue 2002). The session was recorded less than two years before his death, at the time bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbera joined his trio. The beauty of this one-hour program is that Bill Evans sounds relaxed and open, and explains many things about the way he plays and what he strives to achieve, offering an abundance of insights into his career and thought process. It is a very clarifying interview, with him playing solo or in duet with McPartland in between the conversations. There are few words left to describe the creative and fertile musical mind that was Bill Evans. This session is a rare opportunity to hear him talk casually about both music and some elements of his personal life and to experience some of the unique, creative processes that dealed with this exceptional musician. It was very interesting to hear his thoughts on jazz music, and to get a glance through his thinking and sensibility behind playing and improvising. He spends a great deal of time responding thoughtfully to Marian McPartland's questions and illustrates in-depth, when she asks him for example to demonstrate his concept of displacement of time. He talks about his idea of the piano trio and his trio members, based on their ability to be given a great deal of freedom and use it responsibly to contribute to the whole. They talk about contributions of the bass players Eddie Gomez and Scott LaFaro to Evans' music. "I try to reach out for things that are natural and fundamental.... I choose the people as responsible musicians and artists so that I can give them that kind of freedom and know that they're going to use it with discretion toward a total result.... With Scott LaFaro it was a once in a lifetime thing, but I have had marvelous experiences with other bass players, with Eddie Gomez certainly for eleven years, and now with a new young bass player--I don't know what I can say about ... Marc Johnson.... He's just gorgeous." He emphasises the importance of knowing the structure of a tune and insist that knowledge must lead intuition. No devotee of Bill Evans should pass by the opportunity to hear this musical and verbal exchange.

From the liner notes of the album by Marian McPartland about "Reflections in D" from Duke Ellington: "Sitting next to him, listening to the rise and fall of the melody, I realized that, perhaps unconsciously, he choose some of the most romantic, evocative tunes there are. The tune ended softly, with a chord so perfect it took my breath away". The track was also recorded on the third and final recording of overdubbed solos, the album "New Conversations" (Warner Bros, 1978)

Cover 1978

Bill Evans & Marian McPartland

Cover 2002

Bill Evans' reply in an interview about his appearance on the covers of his albums

Lee Jeske: "The smile, I realize, is a rarity. Of your entire recorded oeuvre I can't think of a single cover in which the spectacled, professorial Evans is smiling."
Bill Evans: "It gets a little over-emphasized and so, naturally, they just choose pictures like that. If there are four pictures and I'm smiling on two, they pick the one with the serious look. My image seems to be of the intellectual, serious, romantic, lyric, ballad player and this is certainly one side of myself. But I think I put much more effort, study and development and intensity into just straight ahead jazz playing, the language of it and all that swinging, energy, whatever. It seems that people don't dwell on that aspect of my playing very much; it's always the romantic, lyric thing, which is fine, but I really like to think of myself as a more total jazz player than that." (Down Beat, 1979)

  Vintage ad for the album "Since We Met" (Fantasy 1976) and for Verve Down Beat winners in 1965

  Vintage ad for the album "Trio 65" (Verve 1965) and the album "Together Again" (Rhino/Wea 1999)

  Original vintage promo ad for Riverside Records "Portrait In Jazz" (1960) and "Explorations" (1961)

  Vintage ad for the Paris Concert February 1965 and "The Complete Riverside Recordings 18-LP box

The Riverside album "Portrait in Jazz" from 1960 on a used phonecard from Japan

Original vintage promo ad for Verve Records "The Complete Bill Evans on Verve" (1997)

A collector item. From the radioprogram "Voices of Vista No. 41", a 12" transcription disc from the mid-1960s 33 RPM Record Size LP. Vista (Volunteers In Service To America), produced for the Office of Economic Opportunity by M. A. Mangum, Inc. for the use of radio stations. The Bill Evans side is 23 minutes & 50 seconds long and features Bill Evans with Jim Hall playing "Jazz Samba" from "Intermodulation"; "Time Remembered" and "Prelude" from the "Bill Evans Trio With Symphony Orchestra" arranged and conducted by Claus Ogerman. The other side of the LP has only VISTA promos. Also interviews by Willis Clark Conover, Jr. (1920 – 1996). He was a jazz producer and broadcaster on the Voice of America for over forty years. He produced jazz concerts at the White House, the Newport Jazz Festival, and for movies and television.

Another broadcasting memorabilium: A special disc jockey record released on a 45 rpm single from the album "Bill Evans Plays the Theme from the V.I.P.'s". (With Bill Evans (p) Claus Ogerman (arr, cond.) brass, rhythm, strings, woodwinds NYC, May 6, 1963). This commercial recording is not an album with the quality of "With Symphony Orchestra" or "Symbiosis", but musically a disappointing fiasco. This music was recorded Bill had already gained a huge well deserved reputation. Why he took on this project is totally incomprehensible. Next to it the 45 rpm single "Prelude" from the album "Bill Evans Trio with Symphony Orchestra" with Claus Ogerman (Verve, 1966).

A Bill Evans compilation on two CD's with a biography of 44 pages released by one of the heading French magazines for music "Le Monde de la Musique" and "Le Monde du Jazz" from the newspaper "Le Monde", edited by the French music journalists and writers André Francis and Jean Schwartz. Inclusive rare registrations like the songs "Kimona, My House", "Jack's Blues", "Aeolian Drinking Song" and "Mother of Earl".