Village Vanguard session with Bill Evans

I love both Village and Waltz. You can just feel the cohesiveness and natural flow of the music from these gifted musicians. Plus the music has a very intimate feel and the ambient sounds from the crowd almost makes it feel as if you're there. I have both of these on vinyl and they are essential weekend listening for me.

i purchased the 2 lps in a dept.store bargain bin as a teenager. on my tinny webcor phono i struggled with them never having heard anything like it before. i was too young to even recognize the popular melodies improvised on. eventually i became so devoted to them that in my naivety i thought they were typical jazz. nothing else in jazz really intrigued me at that age having a very limited exposure to it. well, of course my tastes in jazz would later blossom. but i still love the vanguard sessions above all. there is a nice 3 cd set with booklet available now and very affordable. indeed the ambient sounds from the audience and bar, the peel of a woman's laugh only add to the intimate magic of these recordings.

1. If the recording took place in a studio with a typical studio atmosphere (a bit sterile), would you still hold it in high regard?
2. Would you classify this recording as "great" because of it's highly "organized" character with implementation of notes in an "economic", almost Zenlike way, like Kind of Blue, Out to Lunch and A Love Supreme?

Chris

1) Yes.
2) I don't understand where you are trying to take this thread, or perhaps I'm just missing the point of this thread.....

Are you talking about the quality of the recordings, or are you tralking about the music and trying to make some sort of comparison of Evans music/style and that of Miles Davis?

BTW, what does "Zenlike" mean to you? It makes me think that you just happen to enjoy Davis' style more than you appreciate Evans style and, more importantly, what he contributed to the evolution in jazz.

It's OK if you don't like Evans........I haven't pulled out Kind of Blue lately either.

FWIW.

Hi Newbee, I'm just trying to find out a reason why this is a great recording. Cincy bob has already given his explanation, which is to me a very insightful one. Many thanks!
No, it's not that I don't like Bill Evans. In fact I like his style of playing very much and I think the Village Vanguard recordings are wonderful. I'm comparing the Village Vanguard sessions with Kind of Blue because I can draw some parallels between these two. For example: Bill Evans Trio played as if there is only one "corpus" and one mind playing. The same holds true for the Miles Davis Quintet in Kind of Blue. Both ensembles played as much notes as needed, not more (this is what I call Zenlike). You can hear the same qualities in Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch and John Coltrane's A Love Supreme.

Chris