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Bill Evans: Moon Beams

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Riverside Records
Released: 1962
Time:
 49:30
Category: Jazz
Producer(s): Orrin Keepnews
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.billevanswebpages.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2013
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Re: Person I Knew (Bill Evans) - 5:44
[2] Polka Dots and Moonbeams (Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen) - 5:01
[3] I Fall in Love Too Easily (Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne) - 2:42
[4] Stairway to the Stars (Matty Malneck and Mitchell Parish) - 4:53
[5] If You Could See Me Now (Tadd Dameron) - 4:29
[6] It Might as Well Be Spring (Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II) - 6:05
[7] In Love in Vain (Leo Robin and Jerome Kern) - 5:00
[8] Very Early (Bill Evans) - 5:06
      Bonus tracks:
[9] Polka Dots and Moonbeams [Alternate Take] - 4:17
[10] I Fall in Love Too Easily [Alternate Take] - 2:38
[11] Very Early [Alternate Take] - 3:35

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bill Evans - Piano
Chuck Israels - Bass
Paul Motian - Drums

Orrin Keepnews - Producer
Bill Schwartau - Engineer
Doug Sax - Mastering
Alan Yoshida - Mastering
Phil De Lancie - Remastering
Ken Deardoff - Cover Design
Pete Sahula - Cover Photo
Steve Schapiro - Back Liner Photo
Joe Goldberg - Liner Notes

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2012 CD Riverside Records RLP-428

Recorded on ay 17, 1962 (#5,9); May 29, 1962 (#1, 8); June 2, 1962 (#2-4, 6-7); June 5, 1962 (#10-11); at Sound Makers Studio, New York.

Remastered 1990 (Fantasy Studios, Berkeley)

After Scott LaFaro's tragic death, Evans avoided the studio for some time. He returned in May and June of 1962 to record this album of ballads with Chuck Israels and Paul Motion.



Moon Beams is a 1962 album by jazz musician Bill Evans, and the first trio album recorded by Evans after the death of Scott LaFaro. With Chuck Israels on bass taking the place of LaFaro, Evans recorded several songs during these May and June 1962 sessions. Moon Beams contains a collection of ballads recorded during this period. The more uptempo tunes were put on How My Heart Sings!. In 2012, it was released a new remastered edition which includes three previously unreleased alternate takes. Writing for Allmusic, music critic Thom Jurek wrote of the album "...selections are so well paced and sequenced the record feels like a dream... Moonbeams was a startling return to the recording sphere and a major advancement in his development as a leader."



Moonbeams was the first recording Bill Evans made after the death of his musical right arm, bassist Scott LaFaro. Indeed, in LaFaro, Evans found a counterpart rather than a sideman, and the music they made together over four albums showed it. Bassist Chuck Israels from Cecil Taylor and Bud Powell's bands took his place in the band with Evans and drummer Paul Motian and Evans recorded the only possible response to the loss of LaFaro -- an album of ballads. The irony on this recording is that, despite material that was so natural for Evans to play, particularly with his trademark impressionistic sound collage style, is that other than as a sideman almost ten years before, he has never been more assertive than on Moonbeams. It is as if, with the death of LaFaro, Evans' safety net was gone and he had to lead the trio alone. And he does first and foremost by abandoning the impressionism in favor of a more rhythmic and muscular approach to harmony. The set opens with an Evans original, "RE: Person I Knew," a modal study that looks back to his days he spent with Miles Davis. There is perhaps the signature jazz rendition of "Stairway to the Stars," with its loping yet halting melody line and solo that is heightened by Motian's gorgeous brush accents in the bridge section. Other selections are so well paced and sequenced the record feels like a dream, with the lovely stuttering arpeggios that fall in "If You Could See Me Now," and the cascading interplay between Evan's chords and Israel's punctuation in "It Might As Well Be Spring," a tune Evans played for the rest of his life. The set concludes with a waltz in "Very Early," that is played at that proper tempo with great taste and delicate elegance throughout, there is no temptation by the rhythm section to charge it up or to elongate the harmonic architecture by means of juggling intervals. Moonbeams was a startling return to the recording sphere and a major advancement in his development as a leader.

Thom Jurek - AllMusic.com



For devout followers of pianist Bill Evans, the date June 25th has become something of a Holy Day. It was of course on that day in 1961 that an Evans- led trio, featuring Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums, concluded a two- week engagement at New York’s Village Vanguard by recording the entire day’s output. The initial hope was that a live record could be milked from the notoriously particular Evans, who, in an era when prominent jazzmen were releasing as many as five and six LPs a year, had recorded a total of four albums as a leader since 1956. But there were far better reasons for assembling the mobile two- track that Sunday afternoon.

From its inception in the fall of 1959, it had been almost immediately perceptible to those paying attention that this was not your ordinary jazz piano trio. Two stellar records, Portrait in Jazz and Explorations, had charted the development of something unique brewing between these three musicians. Rather than providing a blanket for individual meandering, the delicate interplay shared by this triumvirate began to take on a feeling of collective, simultaneous improvisation, with the soloist barely discernible from the accompanist. The hours spent coaxing their instruments and minds into arriving at the same destination had begun to bear fruit, and it was in that Greenwich Village basement that it now seemed as if anything and everything was possible for this group. Together they had reached a new level of creative unity and artistic beauty that few, if any, improvising bands could hope to match, and it was still only the beginning. Ten days later, however, Scott LaFaro was killed in a car accident, and what had seemed so attainable on that Sunday in June was now gone forever.

The news of the bassist’s death devastated Evans on both a personal and professional level, to the point where he avoided playing the piano, even in private settings, for several months. Musically, picking up where he had left off, sans the spark that had driven him, was a daunting task. The trio had been propelled by Evans’ romantic lyricism and divine touch just as much as it had been by LaFaro’s rich sustain and explosive fills. Finding a replacement on the same wavelength was simply not doable. When Bill and Paul Motian reconvened some six months later for a series of club dates, a young man named Chuck Israels was in the bass seat. In Israels, the band had not necessarily found someone to pick up where LaFaro had left off, as much as a new, individual voice- one that was sympathetic to the intimacy and balance that Evans was striving for.

By springtime of the following year, the group had coalesced to the point where it felt comfortable to make a record. Evans’ mastery of the ballad form was already well established, yet he had never attempted anything close to an all- ballads program in the studio. Following producer Orrin Keepnews’ suggestion that a second, more bop- oriented record be recorded simultaneously to avoid any languidness, the “second trio” produced two records over three studio dates, the up- tempo How My Heart Sings and Moonbeams. The latter remains among the most personal and important works in the entire Bill Evans catalog.

Evans’ lush, urban romanticism had become a defining quality of his work, dating back to his time spent with Miles Davis. When Bill played, it was as if the piano was truly singing. Under his pliant touch, melodies took on a life of their own, soaring upwards, with exquisitely chosen notes rising and holding for just the right amount of time before falling earthward like burning stars. Indeed, nobody before or since has handled a ballad like Mr. Evans, and every second of Moonbeams showcases this extraordinary talent.

The soft, droning left- hand chords of the Evans original, “Re: Person I Knew” (a quirky anagram of the name Orrin Keepnews) establish the pensive, late- night mood that comes to permeate the entire album. Beginning with a loose, unaccompanied piano statement (on an out- of- tune, somewhat “dead” sounding instrument which is present throughout the entire record) before sliding into a limber, smoothly swirling structure, this tune proved to be the ideal vehicle for drawing in both performers and listeners, surely a reason why it would become one of Evan’s most oft-requested compositions throughout the next two decades. On this cut, LaFaro’s absence is instantly noticeable. Though the group interacts well, there is little question of who is in charge. It is Evans, playing with a muscular rhythmic quality unlike anything he had done before, that carries the performance through each phase.

Though he had always been the driving creative force behind the bands bearing his name, it wasn’t until Moonbeams that Bill Evans sounded like a fullfledged leader. On earlier trio LPs, LaFaro’s roaring presence had often been so significant that Evans’ piano became more of an impressionistic collage, rather than a leading voice. But comparisons between the two groups are inane and unnecessary. What cannot be denied, however, is that the piano was the unquestionable limelight of this new trio. With Israel’s more reserved and spacious style, along with Motian’s ever-sensitive rain- like brushwork, Evans was able to inject a sense of firmness into his ballad playing, while still retaining his signature tenderness. In the LPs original liner notes, Joe Goldberg, commenting on the achievement of this difficult balance, described Evans’ playing as having “the delicate strength of silk thread.”

While the rhythm section maintains a slow, luscious throbbing, that “silk thread” pushes the album along through its dream- like state. As the trio makes its way through a suite of gorgeous re- workings of standard tunes, it becomes less and less apparent that a jazz group is actually responsible for this feeling of serenity. Indeed, if one closes their eyes it seems as if they have been overtaken by a swell of foamy pink clouds that float lazily through the sky. Very rarely does Evans pierce through this effect by reaching for the keyboard’s utmost registers. On this record, the majority of his playing is done with full, intricately locked hands around middle C. When his lead line does extend upward, it is only in brief, rippling movements, as on the sparkling melodic tweaking he applies to “It Might As Well Be Spring.” It was through this unique application of slower tempos and long, contemplative solos on jazz and popular song forms that the trio was able to, in some sense, surpass the realm of a jazz group, and enter into the world of improvised chamber music.

Following the six covers, the record concludes with “Very Early,” another gem from the pen of Evans. Written as a college assignment when the pianist was not yet twenty years old, this moderate ¾ waltz showcases the often-overlooked compositional brilliance of Bill. Like practically every other piece of music that he conceived, “Very Early” was smart, logical, scientific, and intensely rich, both melodically and harmonically. Though he had waited close to fifteen years for the piece to make its recording debut, Evans would return to the tune often throughout the remainder of his career, but usually at far more rapid pace that never would have worked in the context of Moonbeams. For the better part of a century, the legacies of musicians have been preserved through the recordings that they made. With more than four decades of hindsight, it seems almost as if a record such as Moonbeams was made specifically to define the dynamic artistic legacy of Bill Evans for later generations. Despite his tremendous faculty and comfort with blistering tempos, Evans’ reputation will forever be tied to his unparalleled mastery of the ballad, a talent on full display throughout this recording. Today we can view this record as a documentation of the very essence of its main creator. It is intense, intelligent, romantic, beautiful, and tragic all at once. But in 1962 it was just a step in the right direction for a group trying to discover its own voice. It is a unique and noteworthy achievement in either sense.

John Varrallo - www.billevanswebpages.com
 

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