BILL EVANS (PIANO) — Bill Evans With Symphony Orchestra (review)

BILL EVANS (PIANO) — Bill Evans With Symphony Orchestra album cover Album · 1966 · Third Stream Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Amilisom
"Bill Evans Trio with Symphony Orchestra" is the kind of album that hinges greatly on the listener's expectations. With a name like "Bill Evans Trio with Symphony Orchestra" any serious music listener (like a critic) who has most likely become familiar with symphonic works for piano may develop expectations of some kind that this album is going to be something of a third-stream jazz piano concerto. I admit I had this same feeling myself, and my first listen-though of this felt dull, disappointing, and almost led me to give it 2 stars. For the sake of the reader, I will extrapolate more on the causes of my disappointment so that they may be able to avoid my mistake and experience this album to its fullest extent.

Probably one of the biggest problems is this: the first track is a bad representation of the rest of the album. "Granados" begins with Bill Evans playing solo. When he has finished his intro the orchestra takes over with a section separate from his intro. But when this ends Bill Evans comes back in with the members of his trio, Chuck Israels and Larry Bunker. Both Bunker and Israels do a fine job making a groove while Evans plays a good solo, but for listeners wanting the piano concerto sound, the sound of a piano trio coming in is a let down. At this point we might as well assume that the rest of the album is going to be an ongoing system of back-and-forth between the orchestra's classical arrangements and the piano trio playing straight-ahead swing. A couple minutes pass, the time signature changes, and the orchestra joins in behind Evans' solo in sparse, held-out chords before dropping out again.

At this point anybody expecting something different will have most likely given up on this album. It will seem like the orchestra is barely present as there is too much focus on the trio separate from the orchestra. But this flat contrast between orchestra and trio is less present throughout the rest of the album, as Evans joins in with harmony and melody in different places to add to the orchestral arrangement.

But I also have to admit that the criticisms of this album that I have previously discussed are still true. There is a separation between the orchestra and trio, with emphasis on the trio.

This is where one says "So, what?!" The arrangements sound really nice, the trio sounds really nice, and the way the two complement each other creates a fantastic album atmosphere that makes me continue to return to it. Once I accepted that I wasn't going to be hearing another third-stream masterwork like Keith Jarrett's "Arbour Zena" I realized how good and true-to-itself this album actually sounds. Hopefully others will not be turned away from this as I first was.
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