Last Waltz: The Final Recordings Live

Bill Evans Trio - Last Waltz: The Final Recordings Live

Last Waltz: The Final Recordings Live
List Price: $124.98
Category: Music CD
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CD Details

Artist: Bill Evans Trio
Edition: Music CD
Format: Box set, Live
CD Release Date: 2000-10-10
Music Label: Milestone
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
  1. After You, Who?
  2. Like Someone in Love
  3. Polka Dots and Moonbeams
  4. Emily
  5. Turn Out the Stars
  6. I Do It for Your Love
  7. Nardis
  8. But Beautiful
Music CD 2
  1. Yet Ne'er Broken
  2. Knit for Mary F.
  3. Touch of Your Lips
  4. My Man's Gone Now
  5. Turn Out the Stars
  6. Your Story
  7. Nardis
Music CD 3
  1. Peau Douce
  2. Yet Ne'er Broken
  3. My Foolish Heart
  4. Up With the Lark
  5. Turn Out the Stars
  6. I Do It for Your Love
  7. Nardis
  8. Noelle's Theme/I Loves You, Porgy
Music CD 4
  1. Yet Ne'er Broken
  2. Spring Is Here
  3. Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)
  4. Letter to Evan
  5. If You Could See Me Now
  6. Two Lonley People
  7. Sleepin' Bee
  8. Haunted Heart
  9. Five
Music CD 5
  1. Re: Person I Knew
  2. Tiffany
  3. Polka Dots and Moonbeams
  4. Like Someone in Love
  5. Your Story
  6. Someday My Prince Will Come
  7. Letter to Evan
  8. My Romance
  9. But Beautiful
Music CD 6
  1. Mornin' Glory
  2. Emily
  3. For Mary F
  4. Days of Wine and Roses
  5. Up With the Lark
  6. My Foolish Heart
  7. Nardis
  8. But Beautiful
Music CD 7
  1. My Foolish Heart
  2. Nardis
  3. Mother of Pearl
  4. If You Could See Me Now
  5. My Man's Gone Now
  6. Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)
  7. Waltz for Debby
  8. Spring Is Here
  9. Five
Music CD 8
  1. Letter to Evan
  2. My Man's Gone Now
  3. 34 Skidoo
  4. Spring Is Here
  5. Autumn Leaves
  6. Knit for Mary F.
  7. Nardis

Music reviews of Last Waltz: The Final Recordings Live

Music Review: One for the ages
Rating: 5 Stars

Finding the right adjective to describe Bill Evans is tough. Genius, mastermind, virtuoso, etc.--they all fit! Evans was simply one of the most innovative jazz pianists of the 20th century. Haunted by his inner demons, Evans found solace in heroin and (towards the end) cocaine. As jazz fans know, this is a common thread that links the greats: Charlie Parker, Art Pepper, Miles Davis, John Coltrane. They all struggled with booze & drugs. Sadly, Evans lost the battle and his body succumbed in 1980. One of his last shows was a multi-night gig at San Francisco's Keystone Korner, captured on this BRILLIANT box.

Much like the aforementioned Art Pepper, Evans' playing took on a new dimension in his final years. He poured everything he had left into his music. Every song on "The Last Waltz" is absolutely dripping with emotion, and one gets the sense that Bill was trying to go out with a bang. I've listened to most of his live recordings and I have to say, even the LaFaro days did not produce music of this pedigree.

I'd be lying if I said much of the music here is upbeat. It is melancholy. This is partly, I think, because the songs take on another dimension due to Mr. Evans' circumstances at the time of recording. Evans was dying at the piano as he stomped through "Up With the Lark" or delicately teased out "Knit for Mary F", and you can sense an urgent desperation to impart his gift to an audience just one more time. This desperation doesn't translate into sloppy playing--quite the opposite. Evans is at the top of his game.

Most great art moves us in ways that are difficult to explain. This recording is no exception and like a Fellini film or Yeats poem, leaves the listener breathless. I cannot recommend this enough. It is a brooding, nuanced portrait of one of the greatest men to ever play the piano.

Description of Last Waltz: The Final Recordings Live

This eight-CD set was recorded at San Francisco's Keystone Korner between August 31 and September 8, 1980, just a week before Evans's death on September 15. With Evans were bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbera. It was an unusually well-balanced rhythm team for the pianist, perhaps the best combination of talents since he first developed his trio style with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian two decades before. They provide Evans with responsive support that can shift from the quietest underpinnings to aggressive stimulation. There's often a characteristic movement here from introspective solo passages to vigorous trio dialogues that shows just how hard Evans could swing when he had the right drummer.

Largely a final encounter with Evans's key repertoire, the set includes multiple versions of his favorite pieces, like the ballads "But Beautiful," "My Foolish Heart," and "Emily," and his own "Letter to Evan" and "Turn Out the Stars," perennial stimulants for his profound harmonic imagination. But there are also then-recent compositions that never reached the recording studio, like "Yet Ne'er Broken," the repeating "Your Story" with its subtle underlying movement, and "Knit for Mary F." The signature "Nardis" is heard in six different versions, each of them compelling and each a distinct exploration, from a crisp seven-minute version to a concluding performance that stretches to nearly 20. Evans introduces the third version: "We've learned from the potential of the tune, and every once in a while a new gateway opens and it's like therapy." Each of the longer versions is a structure for extended solos by each trio member. Evans's own improvisations are concentrated in extended unaccompanied introductions, stretching to a sublime seven minutes on the final version.

The set is a treasure trove for Evans enthusiasts, inviting close and extended listening and rewarding it with the subtlest inventions and variations. There are rare depths here that represent some of his greatest recorded work. --Stuart Broomer

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