There is no one I like more than Bill Evans, not that I admire him more than anyone else, but he's certainly up there with the best (of many) for me. He happened to grow up a few towns away from me in NJ, we've had our fair share here. Yes, what a magic trio there!
Portrait in Jazz - The Perfect Record?
With working from home, I've been listening mostly to digital, but this morning I decided to really sit down and listen to some records and the first one was Bill Evans' Portrait in Jazz. I've always liked Evans' music and recordings, but this just blew me away. As perfect as you can get as far as performance, engineering, sonics and music. Recorded in 1959, they only had one plate reverb to use and it made everyone sound like they're in the same room. Once the digital reverbs came out, engineers went crazy with a different reverb on everything - Hello! Different reverb = different room. Not exactly a recipe for cohesive sonics. IMO, this was Bill at his best with his best trio - Scott LaFaro and Paul Motion. Not that Eddie Gomez and Marty Morrell were slouches. Far from it. Anyway - stop reading and go fish this out of your record rack. For you digital folks, the XRCD is not bad at all. IMO the piano sound is not as pure, but that could be because of the limitations of my digital system.
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