Autumn Leaves

Description

Bill Evans dedication and his openness to music and to inspiration made him one of the top rank of jazz musicians.
Very few, if any, jazzmen have the discipline to limit their expression so purely to the music itself as Bill Evans did.
Watching him play was most like watching a religious service.
He wanted to reach the listener, of course as do all musicians, and Evans recognised that almost everyone responds to music on some level, but he took the ultimate risk and let the music do it all by itself.
These recordings certainly show that! By the decade of the 60's ,thanks to his new recordings as a leader for Riverside Records, the Bill Evans Trio with Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums was rapidly emerging worldwide as one of the most significant new voices on the jazz scene.
He was booked to appear in many countries of Europe and these recordings were made during one such tour.
The Trio had developed into a really cohesive unit with marvellous mastery of the art of the Trio with empathetic interpretations of the melodies, scintillating interplay and imagination.
This recital has all these qualities and is simply a joy from start to finish; Bill Evans often spoke of the necessity of the artist being the ultimate expert on himself.
Something else he said - a phrase he used referring to a point of view he called "the jazz mind" - was especially applicable to his own playing.
Bill defined "the jazz mind" as being involved with "an instantaneous response....like if you pick up a ball and you know how to throw, you don't have to think about throwing it....your feelings send out sort of a motivation and that has to be answered without figuring and tearing apart....there has to be a real facility to answer that motivation." He had that facility and that instantaneous response throughout his jazz career.
You can hear it every time he plays.
"There are certain kinds of music," Evans said, "which do not move people to express themselves out loud.
There are kinds of religious music where people are moved inside and they may never just express it outwardly.
"Jazz represents the whole person, not just some particular part and there's a spiritual side and a practical side and maybe some humour.
Maybe I do everything for music.
I live my life for music in a way, Somebody wrote a book once, 'Music is my Faith,' and I think that's probably pretty close to it".
That he was able to accomplish what he has did - to make himself a major jazz voice - without bending in any direction is a tribute to his strength as a creator and to his gifts as a musician.
It is now over-half a century since Bill Evans first made his name known to jazz listeners as a member of the Miles Davis Quintet.
His success, like that of Miles, is a success for pure music, for pure creativity in a context of experience and facility but with the jazz edge of spontaneity and immediacy.
That made him the major figure that he was.