It takes a lot of courage for a pianist to take on Bill Evans. It requires even more courage for that pianist to overdub himself recording Evans' songs. After all, any pianist who would attempt such a thing would be asking for a ton of trouble. Evans fans are pretty particular, passionate and protective of the late pianist and have a low tolerance for intruders. Unless, of course, a pianist paying tribute to Evans actually pulled it off. Alan Pasqua does just that on Twin Bill: Two Piano Music of Bill Evans.
But let's back up. I generally don't care for Evans tribute albums. My feeling is Evans aced everything he recorded, and the last thing I generally want to hear is someone else's interpretation of his definitive versions. So I was already suspect when I spied Pasqua's album title.
Next is the double-decker gimmick. Evans recorded three albums in which he overdubbed himself using multitrack recording techniques—Conversations with Myself (1963), Further Conversations with Myself (1967) and New Conversations (1978). So the fact that Pasqua was trying to pull off something akin to Yet Even Further New Conversations seemed a bit galling—like breaking into a museum and putting your feet up on an exhibit's furniture.
Flipping the CD over, I noticed that the track list included Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Vindarna Sucka Uti Skogarna and Grace—songs that Bill Evans never recorded. Now, I thought, we were into appalling territory. This would be our museum chap breaking out a tuna sandwich.
Furiously tearing open the plastic, I slipped on the CD, fully expecting to hit eject after about eight bars into the first track. But a funny thing happened on the way to the trash. I actually loved what I heard.
Pasqua manages to pull off his triple play by employing crystal clear reverence for Evans and his lyrical space-swing technique. These tracks aren't ape jobs, in which a pianist does his or her best to sound as though they are playing Evans transcriptions. Instead, they are solid, reverential interpretations that live inside Evans' style and soul.
From Very Early and Gloria's Step to Nardis and Interplay, Pasqua delivers a full, lush Evans tribute. In his overdubs, Pasqua focused less on attempting the complex, fairy-delicate musical dialogues that Evans pulled off in his Conversations albums. Rather, Pasqua wisely uses the overdub to give this music heft and dynamism, always mindful of Evans' sensitivity and style.
As for Take Me Out to the Ballgame, it actually works. Evans, of course, wasn't above vamping children's songs or radio jingles. He had great fun recording Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Little Lulu and the WNEW Theme in the '60s. Pasqua plays Ballgame as a waltz, and darned if his harmony choices don't sound like Evans himself. Pasqua leaves the listener feeling as though the master himself were sitting at the keyboard, his head bent over, his eyes closed. [Photo of Bill Evans in 1965 by Roberto Polillo]
Oh, one more thing. Pasqua bravely left himself open on yet a fourth front. Did I mention that this is a solo album?
Who is Alan Pasqua? The pianist played with The New Tony Williams Lifetime and recorded with Bob Dylan. He wrote the CBS Evening News theme and currently is chair of Jazz Studies, Associate Professor, at the University of Southern California. More at Wikipedia.
JazzWax tracks: Alan Pasqua's Twin Bill: Two Piano Music of Bill Evans (BFM) can be found at iTunes and here. You can hear his Evansized Take Me Out to the Ballgamehere.
JazzWax clip: Here's a clip of Pasqua's Highway 14 from his 2005 album, My New Old Friend...
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I agree with Jan about the merits of "New Conversations." I agree with Marc that any attempt to emulate Evan's recordings is bound to fall short. However Bill's tunes can be great vehicles for artists to do their own thing with. Tierney Sutton's "Blue in Green" has six Evans tunes and nine standards, all of them done her, and the band's, own way. Her version of "Very Early" is especially striking. Howard Alden's "Your Story" has wonderful interpretations of eleven Evans compositions.
Pasqua is one of the very few jazz musicians who ever played with Dylan. sadly, his place in the Dylan discography is during the much-derided Street-legal phase. As documented on the "Live at Budokan" phase, Dylan is either a)paying homade to the recently departed Elvis by emulating a Vegas-type sound or b)trying to make a lot of money quickly following his divorce & the disasterous releae of his film renanldo & Clara by trying to make a highly commercial sound. The drummer on these recordings is Ian Wallace, who led the Crimson Jazz trio which did two albums of jazz intreps of the King Crimson Songbook (of which was Wallace was one of their many drummers). Dylan they fully jumped the shark among hard-core fans by then heading into his hard-Christian phase, the Jerry Wexler produced Slow train Coming.
23 skidoo, kid. "Ape jobs"? Stand-in for King Kong? Monkey House attendant? Filling in for chimp with a cold on some NASA test flight? Wait, I know... paid extra in the latest Planet-of movie! And your reward, the gorilla your dreams.
But semi-seriously, Marc, I don't get the gist of your last paragraph. Tribute album is first mistake, overdubbing is #2, wrong songs is 3rd strike, and #4 is... playing solo? Isn't that the given condition driving point 2? You overdub to enhance the complexity; you are no longer exactly solo, having become two pianists busily improvising lines around each other instead.
Or did you mean that Bill preferred to work in the trio format? Overdubbing actually allowed him to, sort of, have it both ways.
In addition to the 2 CDs metioned by David above, there are also the Bill Evans tribute albums by the Kronos Quartet, Jean Claude Thiboudet, and John McLaughlin which are worth a listen.
New Conversations was an experiment... I don't think Bill Evans would ever have imagined people debating it's value through a screen. And for that matter, it turned out pretty darn well. There aren't too many piano players from his era, let alone in the history of jazz, that could play 6 hands at once and not 'overdo' it. Evans always sounds tasteful in every note he plays, which is a good sign of his genius.
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Marc Myers writes frequently on music and the arts for the Wall Street Journal. He is author of "Why Jazz Happened" (University of California Press). In 2012, JazzWax was named the Jazz Journalists Association's "Blog of the Year."
I agree with Jan about the merits of "New Conversations." I agree with Marc that any attempt to emulate Evan's recordings is bound to fall short. However Bill's tunes can be great vehicles for artists to do their own thing with. Tierney Sutton's "Blue in Green" has six Evans tunes and nine standards, all of them done her, and the band's, own way. Her version of "Very Early" is especially striking. Howard Alden's "Your Story" has wonderful interpretations of eleven Evans compositions.
Posted by: David | September 20, 2011 at 02:13 AM
Pasqua is one of the very few jazz musicians who ever played with Dylan. sadly, his place in the Dylan discography is during the much-derided Street-legal phase. As documented on the "Live at Budokan" phase, Dylan is either a)paying homade to the recently departed Elvis by emulating a Vegas-type sound or b)trying to make a lot of money quickly following his divorce & the disasterous releae of his film renanldo & Clara by trying to make a highly commercial sound. The drummer on these recordings is Ian Wallace, who led the Crimson Jazz trio which did two albums of jazz intreps of the King Crimson Songbook (of which was Wallace was one of their many drummers). Dylan they fully jumped the shark among hard-core fans by then heading into his hard-Christian phase, the Jerry Wexler produced Slow train Coming.
Posted by: Joel lewis | September 20, 2011 at 09:26 AM
23 skidoo, kid. "Ape jobs"? Stand-in for King Kong? Monkey House attendant? Filling in for chimp with a cold on some NASA test flight? Wait, I know... paid extra in the latest Planet-of movie! And your reward, the gorilla your dreams.
But semi-seriously, Marc, I don't get the gist of your last paragraph. Tribute album is first mistake, overdubbing is #2, wrong songs is 3rd strike, and #4 is... playing solo? Isn't that the given condition driving point 2? You overdub to enhance the complexity; you are no longer exactly solo, having become two pianists busily improvising lines around each other instead.
Or did you mean that Bill preferred to work in the trio format? Overdubbing actually allowed him to, sort of, have it both ways.
Posted by: Ed Leimbacher | September 20, 2011 at 05:01 PM
In addition to the 2 CDs metioned by David above, there are also the Bill Evans tribute albums by the Kronos Quartet, Jean Claude Thiboudet, and John McLaughlin which are worth a listen.
Posted by: James Cimarusti | September 22, 2011 at 01:09 AM
I like Paul Motian's tribute to Evans featuring Frisell, Lovano, and Marc Johnson.
Posted by: Neil | September 23, 2011 at 03:49 PM
New Conversations was an experiment... I don't think Bill Evans would ever have imagined people debating it's value through a screen. And for that matter, it turned out pretty darn well. There aren't too many piano players from his era, let alone in the history of jazz, that could play 6 hands at once and not 'overdo' it. Evans always sounds tasteful in every note he plays, which is a good sign of his genius.
Posted by: DjM | October 16, 2011 at 05:46 PM