Bill Evans at Ronnie Scott's on Resonance Records

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

It’s always great news when co-President Zev Feldman “unearths” another of his legacy tape discoveries and gains the approval [read, “funding”] of Resonance Records President George Klabin to release the new music on vinyl and compact disc.

Reputationally, it’s gotten to the point that Zev - aka “The Jazz Detective” - doesn’t even have to seek this stuff out anymore; people bring it to him!

Such was the case when drummer extraordinaire Jack DeJohnette sought Zev out to listen to some tapes he had recorded of his time on Bill Evans’ trio when they along with bassist Eddie Gomez performed for a month in 1968 at Ronnie Scott’s place in London.

The way this went down along with other details are all included in the media release that Ann Braithwaite of Braithwaite & Katz Communications sent out to those of us fortunate enough to receive a preview copy of the double CD set which you’ll find at the end of this introduction.

The uncovered music by Bill and the trio in performance at Ronnie’s is invaluable, let alone enjoyable, in and of itself, but that’s only the beginning when Zev’s involved because the artistic content of the music has to be matched by the production materials that accompany it.

And as far as the packaging of the product is concerned, we’ve learned over time that Zev and George “spare no expense” and put an immense amount of time and effort into the creation of the finished product. 

Under the capable and creative guidance of John Sellars, the cover art is graced with an original illustration by the renown David Stone Martin, a gift that was made to Zev’s project by Cynthia Sesso of CTSImages.com.

John has also enhanced the album's packaging with an array of photographs of Bill, Eddie, Jack and Ronnie’s club by Francois Jacquenod.

Then Zev set to work scoping out interviews for the sleeve notes booklet - again graced by photos from Francois, but also including some from Chuck Stewart and Veryl Oakland.

The interviews follow the usual Introduction by Zev that contains his explanation of “How it all Happened” and include talks with Jack DeJohnette as conducted by pianist Chick Corea and Zev’s conversations with bassist Eddie Gomez and actor-comedian Chevy Chase, a pianist in his own right who developed a friendship with Bill in the 1970s.

Zev even reached out to the London-based Jazz author and critic Brian Priestly - who was in attendance during some of these 1968 performances by Bill’s trio at Ronnie’s Club - to share his remembrances of his visits to the club to listen to the music in a well-written essay which also includes Brian’s annotations of each of the tracks on these recordings.

So what you get is not only a musical feast but an artistic one as well as other senses are brought into play to augment your enjoyment of Bill Evans Live at Ronnie Scott’s [Resonance Records HCD-2046].

When you talk with Zev about these discoveries, he modestly says that he is “the lucky one” to have the help and support of so many people - not the least of which is George Klabin at Resonance records - to make these finds into a reality that we can all share in.

While there is a great deal of truth and wisdom in the old adage - “I’d rather be lucky than good” - in Zev’s case, thank goodness he’s both - lucky and good.

Here’s Ann’s always marvelous media release:

RESONANCE’S PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED BILL EVANS LIVE AT RONNIE SCOTT’S TO BE RELEASED AS TWO-LP RECORD STORE DAY EXCLUSIVE ON BLACK FRIDAY, NOV. 27; CD AND DIGITAL EDITIONS ARRIVE DEC. 4

Stunning 20-Track Set is Third Resonance Collection of Unissued Material Featuring Pianist Evans’ Short-Lived, Brilliant 1968 Trio With Bassist Eddie Gomez and Drummer Jack DeJohnette

Deluxe Package Includes An Overview Essay by Veteran Critic Brian Priestley, New Interviews with Gomez, DeJohnette, Pianist Chick Corea, and Evans’ Good Friend Chevy Chase, and a One-of-a-Kind Album Cover Drawing by Legendary Artist David Stone Martin

Los Angeles – Resonance Records will proudly release Bill Evans Live at Ronnie Scott’s, the label’s third collection featuring hitherto unheard recordings by the great pianist’s short-lived 1968 trio with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette, as a two-LP Record Store Day exclusive on Black Friday, Nov. 27. The album will subsequently see release as a two-CD set and a digital download on Dec. 4.

 

Resonance – a division of the Rising Jazz Stars Foundation, a non-profit corporation created to discover the next jazz stars – has previously issued two widely acclaimed, never-before-heard albums by Evans’ ’68 unit. That combo recorded the pianist’s second Grammy Award-winning Verve album, Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival; recorded on June 15, 1968, it was the only contemporaneous album released from the lineup during its brief existence.

 

Unearthed by Resonance co-president Zev Feldman (a/k/a “the Jazz Detective”), Some Other Time: The Lost Session From the Black Forest (2016) was a two-LP/two-CD studio date, cut five days after the Evans-Gomez-DeJohnette trio’s Montreux appearance, which had sat unheard in the German vaults for 50 years. A second historic discovery, Another Time (2018), was recorded two days later by the Netherlands Radio Union in Hilversum.

 

These collections garnered praise in DownBeat and JazzTimes in the U.S., Jazzwise in the U.K., and the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll; Some Other Time topped Billboard’s Jazz Albums chart.

 

Drawn from Jack DeJohnette’s personal archives, Live at Ronnie Scott’s comprises 20 scintillating tracks captured during the Evans trio’s month-long ’68 residency at the eponymous saxophonist-impresario’s Soho club. (It is Resonance’s second live Evans album to emanate from that venue: 2019’s Evans in England derived from a 1969 stand at Scott’s, featuring Gomez and drummer Marty Morell.)

 

Recordings by the Evans-Gomez-DeJohnette lineup are as prized as they are rare. DeJohnette was an especially simpatico accompanist for Evans, for he had been a pianist before taking up the drums. Despite their chemistry, the trio played together for a mere six months. During their stay at Scott’s, Miles Davis stopped in to check out the band, and the trumpeter swiftly recruited DeJohnette for his new group. By the end of 1968, Morell was hired by Evans as his replacement, and he drummed behind the pianist through 1974.

 

Distinguished British critic, author, broadcaster, and pianist Brian Priestley, who witnessed Evans’ ’68 trio in action, puts the London stand and Evans’ then-current repertoire in context in newly commissioned notes for the release. He writes that the performances’ “compelling, indeed at times overwhelming, musical quality is such as to impress this listener all over again.”

 

Live at Ronnie Scott’s also features a joint interview, conducted by Feldman, with DeJohnette and Grammy-winning pianist (and, in his early career, drummer) Chick Corea, who played with DeJohnette in Miles Davis’ storied late-‘60s lineups.

 

Recalling his short but memorable stint with Evans, DeJohnette says, “The music was at a really high creative height, and I’m glad I documented that, and the tape was good enough for Resonance to run with it…You really get a chance to hear Bill stretch.”

 

“Bill was a big hero for me and for all of our generation,” Corea says of Evans. “Bill was just like the generation just before us, and we all looked up to him with his recordings with [bassist] Scotty [La Faro] and [drummer] Paul [Motian].”

 

In his own interview with Feldman, Gomez says of the recording, “It’s enlightening to go back and relive moments that are ingrained in your memory in a totally different way; time just does that. Fifty, fifty-two years; that’s a half a century. That’s a long time. So going back and listening to it and reflecting on it and seeing the changes in all three of us from this perspective gives you a different view.”

 

Perhaps the most unexpected element of the package is an extensive interview with the great comic actor and jazz buff Chevy Chase. He encountered Evans’ music as an underage jazz club-goer and began a friendship with the pianist as a student at Bard College, where he played in a band with classmate Donald Fagen of Steely Dan.

 

He tells Feldman that Evans’ music was “the most lyrical jazz you could ever hear, in terms of jazz that wasn’t sung. It was just beautiful. And yet, very complex. Everybody I know tried to be Bill, but all you have to do is put a little video of Bill on or a record and say, ‘Try that.’ He really had a touch on the piano that he couldn’t match.”

 

Gracing the cover of both the LP and CD iterations of Live at Ronnie Scott’s is artwork drawn from a never-before-published, one-of-a-kind lithograph by the late, legendary artist/illustrator David Stone Martin, whose distinctive interpretations of jazzmen in action were featured on dozens of classic jazz LPs, notably including many for Norman Granz’s labels of the ‘40s and ‘50s.

 

Feldman writes, “I had one big decision to make: do we go all the way and recreate a jacket in the same manner of DSM’s classic covers of the 1940s and 1950s, even though our album isn’t from that era?  Or do we go a different, more modern route and simply incorporate DSM’s artwork into a more contemporary style image?  I thought long and hard about this.  Ultimately, I came to see it as an opportunity to recreate that special era, a nod to those classic 1940s and ‘50s Verve/Clef/Norgran album covers.”

Bill Evans Live at Ronnie Scott’s will be the fifth Resonance title to feature unreleased music by the pianist: 2014’s Live at Art D’Lugoff’s Top of the Gate was the label’s first Evans collection. Smile With Your Heart: The Best of Bill Evans on Resonance, a mid-priced compilation, was issued in 2020.