Bill Evans Trio - Explorations (1974 Japanese Milestone Stereo LP)

Vinyl: VG+
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: VG+

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Bill Evans Trio - Explorations | Vinyl LP - 1974 Japanese Milestone Stereo Reissue (SMJ-6038, Riverside Original Recording Series No. 2, Victor Musical Industries, Inc.)

The trio had spent a year working together and honing the interplay that established a new standard for trio interaction by the time they returned to Bell Sound Studios in February 1961. According to Keepnews, the recording sessions' atmosphere was tense, Evans and LaFaro having argued over extra-musical matters, which makes the music's intimacy and mutual attention all the more striking. The session ran through eight pieces in a single afternoon.

Five of the eight tracks are standards. "Haunted Heart," Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz's 1948 show tune, opens at a moderate pace that sets the record's temperature. "Beautiful Love", Wayne King, Victor Young, Haven Gillespie and Egbert Van Alstyne's 1931 piece, had been revived several times by the jazz world, Evans playing it as if he is reading it slowly in a different light. "How Deep Is the Ocean?" is Irving Berlin's 1932 standard, at three and a half minutes the album's most concise track. "I Wish I Knew" is the Harry Warren and Mack Gordon piece, extended past six minutes in a reading that shifts the standard's mood considerably from its 1945 original. "Sweet and Lovely," the 1931 piece by Charles Daniels, Harry Tobias and Jules Lemare, closes the album with the longest performance of the set.

The three remaining tracks are the core of what makes Explorations distinct. "Israel," John Carisi's composition, first recorded on Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool sessions in 1949, takes up the whole of the record's opening six minutes. "Elsa," by Earl Zindars, was a moody, tender waltz making its debut recording here; Evans returned to it many times. "Nardis," which Davis wrote for Cannonball Adderley and which Evans played at Adderley's first Riverside date, features an unusual LaFaro bass solo, the bassist given space that was not typical of the period.

This 1974 Japanese Milestone pressing (SMJ-6038) is the Riverside Original Recording Series No. 2, manufactured by Victor Musical Industries, Inc. The insert is missing from this copy.