絶大な人気を誇るAnalogue Productionsの超高音質シリーズ「UHQR」からジャズ史上最高のライヴ・レコーディングが登場!!

ジャズ史上最高のライヴ・レコーディングの一つとして高く評価されてきたビル・エヴァンス、ポール・モチアン、そしてこの録音の数日後にこの世を去ってしまうスコット・ラファロによるビル・エヴァンス・トリオのライヴ盤『Sunday At The Village Vanguard』が高音質レコードでお馴染み、絶大な人気を誇るアナログ・プロダクションの中でも最高峰の超高音質盤シリーズ「UHQR(Ultra High Quality Record)」に登場!

45回転2枚組、Quality Record Pressings200g重量盤のクラリティ・ヴァイナル仕様で、アナプロの本気度を見せつけた製造工程の詳細を記した小冊子と直筆の検査証明書の同梱は継続。オリジナル・マスターテープから名匠ケヴィン・グレイがマスタリング、有名ジャズ評論家ボブ・ブルメンタールによるライナーノーツが掲載された8ページのブックレットを封入した安定の豪華仕様です。

本作は1961年6月25日、NYの名門クラブ"ヴィレッジヴァンガード"にて『Waltz for Debby』と共に同日録音されたライヴ盤。エヴァンスの繊細なタッチと叙情的なピアノに、ラファロの独創的でメロディアスなベースラインがサウンドに深みと豊かさを与えてくれる「Gloria's Step」をはじめ、エヴァンス、ラファロ、モチアンの並外れた一体感が生み出すインタープレイを浴びることができる魔法のような1作。

発売・販売元 提供資料 （2024/07/09）

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. ~ Thom Jurek

Rovi