Larry Kart

No or not quite -- I would say that he was "ingesting" or "emitting" the thoughts faster than they could be/should be emitted within the given frameworks that were in play. He was at the mercy, so to speak, of various sorts of personal-emotional and musical, maybe even physical, imbalance. BTW when I got to emitting I realized that excretory metaphors were lurking about in the weeds. perhaps with good reason. Doesn't heroin clog you up big time?

A very tentative answer to the "why" of Evans's rushing has been percolating in the back of my brain for a while, and rather than let it sit there and fester, I'll trot it out and see if it strikes a chord, so to speak. With Evans, as with many pianists, there is/was a synergistic relationship between harmonic density and the rate at which harmonic material/information emerges. One wants -- or at least at one time found -- that the more or less vertical flow of harmonic information more or less matched the linear rate at which that material/information emerged. Examples of that in-tandem exposition from the first period of Evans' career -- say up to "Explorations" -- are so numerous as to not need mentioning. In period two, up through the Vanguard recordings with LaFaro and Motian -- the relationship between the density of the harmonic information's flow and the rate of its linear emergence remained in tandem, while at the same time much else shifted. In particular, the flow of harmonic density began to be "shaded" (in terms of variations in timbre and volume) to a considerable degree and in group dynamics, so to speak -- with La Faro, especially, and Motian being allowed or asked to take the ball and run with it. For Evans, and for his trio mates, this increasingly fluid and delicate tri-part balance between the rates and the ways which harmonic information and linear information emerged was well-nigh ideal. And, of course, that balance was definitvely disrupted by LaFaro's death. Then, after a fair amount of time had passed, we have Evans and the rather wispy Chuck Israels, plus on a part-time basis Evans and other bassists -- the relationship between Evans and bassists being crucial. Lumping together all the Evans recordings up to the partnership with Eddie Gomez took shape, I think one can say for sure that by comparison with the Vanguard recordings, Evans' own contribution to the musical mix was much more "foregrounded" in every way. Harmonic information was more spelled out, his touch was much firmer (or more blunt) -- as though the remarkably good-sized portion of the musical space that La Faro used to fill or occupy (more good-sized than was the case in almost any piano trio of the time) now had to be filled or occupied by Evans himself. And how could it be otherwise? At once a "professional" presenter of his music to the public and a man who no doubt needed and wanted to feel reasonably personally inspired to the degree that he felt it now was possible for him to be so, Evans in effect rushed in (no play on words intended; not yet) to fill the gap. How the arrival of Gomez fit into this, I can only guess. Almost as swift as LaFaro but much blunter or more blustery in tone and with a good deal of "attack" in his phrasing but with little of the sense of shading and ever burgeoning lyricism that had made LaFaro a young master whose eventual course of development sadly remains unknown, Gomez - and again this is just a guess -- had the chops to at once vividly evoke for Evans LaFaro's missing presence and make that loss more concrete. Never again, Evans might have felt, will that gap in my musical solar system be filled (Mark Johnson?), and so I must, or I now find myself, pouring more and more harmonic information, often in fairly dense chordal form, into my own playing. And in an attempt to give that increasingly dense and I would say compulsively emerging chordal information the "legs" under its feet that Evans instinctively felt it needed, he began to rush; the problem being (if that's the way to put it) that the subjective sense of added space that Evans might have felt or hoped was the result of increasing the rate at which this increasingly dense harmonic information virtually had the opposite effect. At worst, one had a sense of a more or less clotted, even (by the time of the "Turn Out the Stars" set) frantic rush (again, no play on words necessarily intended, not right now) material, while at other times, even if atdhe pone-time balance between harmonic density and its linear emergence was seldom to be found, the push of the former principle against the latter was genuine -- I would say at least a joust on the level of language -- rather than merely compulsive, almost a matter of frayed nerve endings, as I find all those "hamster on a wheel" solo versions of "Nardis" on the "Turn Out the Stars" set to be. A comparison between those performances and Bud Powell's "Un Poco Loca" is enlightening. The latter speaks with daunting clarity of, and in effect masters, it's musical-emotional drama, its dilemmas; Evans' repeated attempts to ascend the slope of "Nardis" leave him and us only with another slide down a glass mountain where another pile of shards lies in wait. OK -- that's enough for now, or maybe that's all I have to say. No doubt there are typos in the above, but I don't have the juice left to find and fix them right now.

Thanks for all your responses. The next time someone calls me sessy, I'll be enlightened.

Nope.

That is weird indeed.

What does "sessy"mean?

About Chet -- allowing for times when he was totally out of it, arguably he got better as he got older, which seems miraculous if you go by the way he looked. BTW, as Jim says, playing on top of the beat and rushing are not the same thing. One could play right on top of the beat and never deviate a hair tempo-wise. IIRC Shelly Manne was known for never rushing one bit. A while ago sgcim posted about pianist John Mehegan who notoriously rushed and a bassist who took revenge by deliberately doing the same thing to him on a gig to the point where Mehegan couldn't keep up and then asking "So how do you like it?"

In addition to everything else, I love her accent.

Fwiw, I don't find the changes attractive either, but given that he was an artist of substance who was damaging/altering that substance in all the ways we know about "as his character (and body) aged," I find that there are times when I want to try to figure out what was going on there -- both in terms of what Evans gave us and also to help me better understand what other artists did or are doing to themselves along those lines.

It's been a while since I've listened to this Last Waltz performances, which I recall finding much more successful that I feared they might be. Oddly enough perhaps I don't recall much rushing there --certainly not as much as on some tracks of "Turn Out the Stars." Not being a user of cocaine or methadone myself (thanks be), I don't know for sure how either of those drugs would affect someone's sense of tempo -- though I think, anecdotally, of the former as a stimulant and of the latter as a depressant.Taking both at the same time, which I think Evans might have done at times, and who know what you might get? Rushing with the Philly Joe of '64 on drums would be fairly inevitable.

Many of of us have noticed Bill Evans' tendency to rush in his later years. This is particularly noticeable, I think, on the "Turn Out the Stars" Vanguard recordings from 1980, and I speculatively attributed this to Evans' use of cocaine at that point in his life. (How disturbing if at all, Evan's tendency to accelerate might be depends on the tastes and tolerance of the individual listener, of course, and I associated this in any case with Evans' cocaine use in that period of his career and life. ) Now, however, working my way through the two new Resonance releases -- "In London" from 1969 and "At the Top of the Gate" from 1968, both which in general I prefer musically to the "Turn Out the Stars" performances -- I find that the same tendency to rush crops up in '68-'69, a decade before "Turn Out the Stars." I don't have a metronome, but I would guess that some tracks (e.g. ""Waltz for Debby" and "Who Can I Turn To" on the "London" album) accelerate as much as 25 or 30 percent). How much difference that will make to you, if indeed I'm right about this, is again up to you. I'm still trying to figure out whether this primarily was the result of Evans' musical-emotional impulses at the time or more a byproduct of drug use, as I think it was ten years further on). If it was the former, it feels like a sort of puzzle, if you will -- i.e. what was Evans thinking/feeling in '68, '69 that made acceleration more of a "choice" than an unavoidable symptom, as I think it probably was in 1980. Then there's the question of how much and why rushing matters aesthetically. Is it, as think it might be on the Resonance albums, somehow or in part expressive, a "window" into the working of Evans' soul at the time. Or is it, as I feel it to be on much of "Turn Out the Stars," merely or mostly a symptom that is no more expressive than, say, an irregular heartbeat.

Many different recordings of Faure's Nocturnes. My favorites of the ones I own are Sally Pinkas' (complete) and Estaban Sanchez's ( a selection). Of the one I've heard, Albert Ferber's (a selection) and Sanchez. IMO avoid two that are frequently cited as top notch: Collard's (cold and athletic -- to borrow someone else's description) and Marguerite Long's (tinkle tinkle)

Integrated bunch of dancers.

The Evans at the Top of the Gate is excellent (an especially strong "'Round Midnight"); good sound too. The sound on the Evans in London is not so hot. As a longtime non-fan of Eddie Gomez, I have to say that he plays well on both albums, as does Marty Morell. My order arrived with blinding speed.

Don't miss this rather laidback Ted Dunbar album "Gentle Time Alone" (Steeplechase, 1992). Tucker and Dunbar are joined at the hip when it comes to the latter's lyrical take on "Giant Steps"-like harmonic patterning (all the pieces are Dunbar's), and Tucker is in sparkling form.Excellent Jim Anderson recording.

Sampled this. You're right -- this is a big step forward from his Muse days, when his playing left me wanting to throw things.

On my late and beloved first wife's first date with me, we went to see Dexter Gordon at the North Park Hotel. Chuck spotted us there on the sidewalk outside the venue and told me later on that he knew from the way we were looking at each other that we were both gone-ers. He was right.

Good one.

Cole Porter, Gershwin, Harold Arlen come to mind -- also songs with Johnny Mercer lyrics. She has a lot of song books. Also, she's an excellent sight reader, had a lot of good training.

My wife is a very talented amateur classical pianist, a graduate of NYC's High School of Music and Art, who could have been more than an amateur if she had bigger hands. She also loves show tunes and has an uncanny gift for reharmonizing them on the spot. (We have a vintage Baldwin Grand in the living room; she got it as a gift from her parents about 35 years ago.) When she plays Beethoven. for one, it sounds to me like she has a direct line to Ludwig's soul. She likes and understands a lot of jazz, but for some darn reason doesn't care for the sound of a vibrato-rich tenor saxophone, e.g. Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins.

Haven't listened to it in a while but have very positive memories, especially of Steurmann's own Trio. If you want to hear more of Steuermann's own works (don't think there was much or not much that was recorded) I can recommend this 1958 composition (see below). It's not a long work but quite something. Interestingly, Gielen was Steuermann's nephew

Two political posts -- the second a reply to the first -- have been deleted.

Is one of the other two Rosbaud's?

Dishwater!