I love producers and performers who fall madly in love with legacy jazz artists and go the distance to pay tribute to them. I'm thinking of what producer-director Kristian St. Clair did with his 2006 documentary and album This Is Gary McFarland and what jazz historian and album producer Gary
Carner did in 2012 with baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams by compiling Joy Road: The Complete Works of Pepper Adams (Motema).
Another spectacular obsessionist is Ryan Truesdell, a multi-Grammy-winning producer, composer and arranger who immersed himself in the life and music of composer-arranger Gil Evans. Over the years, Ryan has had access to the Gil Evans vault and released Centennial: Newly Discovered Works of Gil Evans (2012) and Gil Evans Project: Lines of Color Live in NYC (2015). Now, he has released Shades of Sound: Gil Evans Project Live at Jazz Standard, Vol. 2 (Outside in Music). [Photo above of Ryan Truesdell by Leo Mascaro]
The album was recorded in May 2014 during the band’s annual week-long engagement at New York's Jazz Standard. The eight songs are divided between four never-before recorded Evans works (Laughing at Life, It’s the Sentimental Thing to Do, I Had Someone Else Before I Had You and Neetie’s Blues) and four of Evans’ arrangements from his albums—Spoonful, The Ballad of the Sad Young Men, The Barbara Song and Buster’s Last Stand.
What made Evans special for me was the sighing quality and Impressionistic approach to his arranging. His music is sophisticated and pretty, enveloping a song's melody in a mist of scurrying horns and conversational sectional counterpoint and instrumental jabs. This approach can be heard on his feathery work for Claude Thornhill; Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool nonet; Davis's Miles Ahead + 19, Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain; Kenny Burrell's Guitar Forms and his own Out of the Cool. [Photo above of Gil Evans]
Ryan and the band he conducted at the Jazz Standard remained faithful to Evans's arrangements. What's more, the album's sound is studio quality, which is amazing given the many instruments playing and the nuanced articulation needed. I'm so glad Ryan decided to finally release this one. My only wish is that a larger percentage of the song had been more familiar Evans works.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Shades of Sound: Gil Evans Project Live at Jazz Standard, Vol. 2 (Outside in Music) at streaming platforms and on vinyl and CD here.
JazzWax clips: Here's The Ballad of the Sad Young Men, featuring Frank Kimbrough on piano...
And here's Buster's Last Stand...
Bonus: Here's Gil Evans conducting his orchestra backing Miles Davis on Dave Brubeck's The Duke from Miles Ahead + 19, for a CBS TV special in 1959...
