JAZZ TRACK

| Some Other Time | Resonance/Birdland HCD-2019

Recently discovered tapes of Bill Evans’s 1968 trio have revealed some previously-unheard masterpieces, says John Shand.

Recently discovered tapes of pianist Bill Evans’ 1968 trio with bassist Eddie Gomez and new drummer Jack DeJohnette have resulted in a doublealbum of, in some cases, previously unheard masterpieces. Where Evans’s greatest band, with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, had a soft-focus foreground in which the relationships between the three instruments ebbed and flowed, this band is more sinewy. You hear it in Evans’s harder attack at the piano and his more driving rhythms. But the interplay is almost as intricate as the earlier trio’s, if slightly more conventional. Inevitably the masterpieces include ballads, where Evans’ touch, harmonies and melodic grace conspire not just with Gomez’s virtuosity, but also with DeJohnette’s gift for cross-hatching the implications of an Evans idea, while insinuating his own subtle complexities into the pianist’s mind.