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Widely regarded as one of the greatest live jazz recordings of all time, Sunday At The Village Vanguard from the Bill Evans Trio, captures a remarkable performance by pianist Bill Evans, bassist Scott LaFaro, and drummer Paul Motian at the Village Vanguard jazz club in New York City on June 25, 1961. The album features a selection of jazz standards and original compositions, showcasing the exceptional musicianship and improvisational prowess of the trio. The interplay between Evans, LaFaro, and Motian is extraordinary, with each musician seamlessly complementing and responding to one another.

The record showed how Evans had refined an approach to solo improvisation in which the pulse was not as obvious as it had been in swing and bop approaches. And his extraordinarily high standards required that each improvised melodic idea be extensively developed, resulting in more continuity and pacing than was common to any previous modern style.

Now Analogue Productions, the audiophile in-house reissue label of Acoustic Sounds, Inc., together with Quality Record Pressings, is putting Sunday At The Village Vanguard where it belongs: the Ultra High Quality Record (UHQR) pressed on Clarity Vinyl with attention paid to every single detail of this one-of-a-kind reissue.

Four glorious sides of 200-gram Clarity Vinyl from QRP, the world's best pressing plant. Cut at 45 RPM to reduce distortion and high frequency loss as the wider-spaced grooves let your stereo cartridge track more accurately. UHQRs from Analogue Productions are the gold-standard in premium vinyl releases, with attention paied to every single detail. The proprietary vinyl compound enhances the sound quality, offering improved dynamics, detail, and tonal accuracy. The heavier vinyl minimizes resonance and warping, providing a stable and flat playing surface. And great care is taken to eliminate any surface noise or imperfections throughout the manufacturing process. — (via Acoustic Sounds)
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200-gram 45 RPM 2LP release limited to 5,000 copies
Mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio from the original analog tapes
Set includes 8-page booklet with liner notes by renowned jazz critic Bob Blumenthal
Pressed on Clarity Vinyl at Quality Record Pressings
Purest possible pressing and most visually stunning presentation and packaging

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Sunday at the Village Vanguard is the initial volume of a mammoth recording session by the Bill Evans Trio, from June 25, 1961 at New York's Village Vanguard documenting Evans' first trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. Its companion volume is Waltz for Debby. This trio is still widely regarded as his finest, largely because of the symbiotic interplay between its members. 

Tragically, LaFaro was killed in an automobile accident ten days after this session was recorded, and Evans assembled the two packages a few months afterward. While Waltz for Debby - in retrospect - is seemingly a showcase for Evans' brilliant, subtle, and wide-ranging pianism, this volume becomes an homage, largely, to the genius and contribution of LaFaro. That said, however, this were never the point. 

According to Motian, when Evans built this trio based on live gigs at the Basin Street East, the intention was always to develop a complete interactive trio experience. At the time, this was an unheard of notion, since piano trios were largely designed to showcase the prowess of the front line soloist with rhythmic accompaniment. 

Here, one need listen no further than the elegant and haunting, graceful modal reading of "My Man's Gone Now" from Porgy & Bess to know that there is something completely balanced and indescribably beautiful in their approach. Motian's brushes whisper along the ride cymbals and both Evans and LaFaro enter into a dialogue that emerges from a darkly hued minor mode, into the melody and somehow beyond it, into a form of seamless dialogic improvisation to know that in the act of one musician slipping over and under another - as happens with all three in an aural basket weave - is something utterly new and different, often imitated but never replicated. 

But in a sense it happens before this, on LaFaro's "Gloria's Step," which opens the recording. His thematic statement includes the briefest intro, hesitant and spacious before he and pianist enter into a harmonic and contrapuntal conversation underscored by the hushed dynamics of Motian's snare, and the lightning-fast interlocutions of single string and chorded playing of LaFaro. 

The shapshifting reading of Miles Davis' "Solar," is a place where angularity, counterpoint, and early modalism all come together in a knotty and insistent, yet utterly seamless blend of post-bop aesthetics and expanded harmonic intercourse with Motian, whose work, while indispensable in the balance of the trio, comes more into play here, and is more assertive with his half-time accents to frame the counterpoint playing of Evans and LaFaro. 

This is a great place to begin with Evans. — (via AllMusic)
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One of the most influential artists in the history of jazz, Bill Evans (1929–1980) was known for his conversational interplay within his trios, his lyrical compositions and his matchless approach to the piano. In 1959, after a year with Miles Davis’ sextet, Evans embarked on a new chapter with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian—a unit that would redefine the notion of the piano trio.

Over the next two years, the group recorded four foundational titles together, beginning with Portrait in Jazz and Explorations. Their final two albums, 1961’s Sunday at the Village Vanguard and 1962’s Waltz for Debby were both captured live on June 25, 1961, at New York City’s legendary Village Vanguard club. Tragically, that would be the last time that the trio would play together, as LaFaro was killed in a car accident days later.

Sunday at the Village Vanguard was intended to be a tribute to LaFaro’s talents—bookended by two of the bassist’s compositions (“Gloria’s Step” and “Jade Visions”) and showcasing his best solos from that summer day. What resulted is arguably one of the greatest live jazz recordings of all time. The trio’s exquisite unity is on display throughout the album, which also includes several crowd-pleasing standards (Cole Porter’s “All of You,” George Gershwin’s “My Man’s Gone Now” and Sammy Fain’s theme to Alice in Wonderland) plus a rendition of Miles Davis’ “Solar.” — (via Label)

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Label: Analogue Productions, Riverside Records
Series: UHQR by Analogue Productions
Format: 2 x Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, Album, Limited Edition, Numbered, Reissue, Stereo, 200g, Clarity Vinyl
Country: US
Reissued: 2024 / Original Release: 1961
Genre: Audiophile Jazz
Style: Post Bop, Modal

File under: Audiophile Jazz
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