Village Vanguard

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Village Vanguard

A jazz institution. Anything Bill Evans recorded here with his famed trio in the early 1960s is worth owning. Waltz for Debby or any of the other albums created from those sessions are some of the best jazz piano trio performances ever recorded.

The next rainy day you have, fire this up:

Or this one:

If you only have time for one:

or

The interplay between the individual trio players doesn’t take a lot of work to hear. My feelings about trios is that usually two of the players are interlocked and communicating well, but there’s always somebody on Saturn, exploring a modal augmented 13th or whatever, but in these recordings, they are all working together. The bass player (Scott LaFaro) was killed 10 days after they finished these sessions. His work on “Gloria’s Step” is one of my favorite all time upright bass performances. Dude is tight without too much wankery. I always wondered what music he would have made had he not died so young.

I digress.

Imagine my surprise, when solo photowalking through the Village and I round a corner and boom.