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Small is beautiful
Limited runs of classic albums designed to be special.
By Jim Irvin.
Bill Evans: the great explorer.
Getty/David Redfern
RECORDED ON February 2, 1961 and released just a month later, The Bill Evans Trio’s second and fifinal studio album Explorations ★★★★★ (Craft Recordings) became a landmark in jazz trio recordings, though no one was expecting such a thing as the music went down. Evans was recovering from hepatitis and in the throes of a heroin addiction. He’d composed nothing for the album and complained of a tension headache as the tapes started rolling, perhaps because young bass player Scott LeFaro was giving him a hard time about his drug use while also complaining about having to use an unfamiliar bass, as his usual instrument was being repaired. Meanwhile, producer and label owner Orrin Keepnews was stressing about the cost of hiring Bell Sound studios because Evans hadn’t liked the piano at his Riverside studio where the groundbreaking fifirst trio album had been captured 13 months earlier. Yet out of this unpromising atmosphere emerged one of jazz’s most lyrical recordings, Evans’s playing sparkling like a moonlit brook, LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian pushing and pulling the rhythm into unexpected grooves. fi