Bill Evans Trio - Portrait in Jazz (1976 Japanese Riverside Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: NM
Sleeve: EX
Obi: None

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Bill Evans Trio - Portrait in Jazz | Vinyl LP - 1976 Japanese Riverside SMJ-6144 (Victor Musical Industries, Riverside Original Recording Series No. 64)

• Bill Evans's first recording with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, cut in a single session on 28 December 1959 at Reeves Sound Studios, New York; produced by Orrin Keepnews; eight months after Evans had appeared on Kind of Blue and among the most important piano trio recordings in the history of jazz
• The trio recorded only two studio albums and two live dates before LaFaro died in a car crash in July 1961 at the age of 25; this is one of four documents they left behind
• Includes both the stereo and mono masters of "Autumn Leaves," and closes with "Blue in Green," co-composed by Evans and Miles Davis for Kind of Blue just months earlier

Bill Evans recorded Portrait in Jazz on 28 December 1959 at Reeves Sound Studios in New York, eight months after contributing piano and co-composition to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. The trio he brought to that session — bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian — had been playing together for only a few months. LaFaro had approached Evans after hearing him at Basin Street East; Motian, who had worked with Evans on his 1956 debut New Jazz Conceptions, was LaFaro's suggestion for drums. Orrin Keepnews produced and wrote the original liner notes; Jack Higgins engineered. The whole album was recorded in one day.

The nine performances include seven jazz standards and two originals. "Peri's Scope" is an Evans composition; "Blue in Green" is credited to Evans and Davis, co-written for Kind of Blue the previous spring. "Someday My Prince Will Come," the Frank Churchill and Larry Morey song from the 1937 Disney film Snow White, had just been used as a jazz vehicle by Dave Brubeck two years earlier, and Evans would return to it throughout his career. This pressing includes both the stereo and mono masters of "Autumn Leaves" — A2 and A3 — a feature of certain editions that preserves both approaches to the same track. What distinguishes the record from earlier piano trio recordings is the structural equality of the three instruments: LaFaro and Motian are not a rhythm section behind a soloist but active participants in the conversation. LaFaro died on 6 July 1961, in a car crash, aged 25, less than 18 months after this session. This 1976 Japanese pressing is manufactured by Victor Musical Industries, Inc. and is No. 64 in the Riverside Original Recording Series.