Turn Out the Stars

Artist: Bill Evans Trio Label: Dreyfus Category: Music Average customer rating: Format: Live Media: Audio CD Number Of Discs: 1 UPC: 764911655321 EAN: 0764911655321 ASIN: B000001ZSX Release Date: 1996-07-23

Listmania:

1. Bill Evans Discography - Part 2/2
2. Great Late Bill Evans

Tracks:

1. I Do It For Love
2. Turn Out The Stars
3. My Romance
4. Laurie
5. Two Lonely People
6. Peau Douce
7. But Beautiful

Similar Items:

1. Letter to Evan
2. Artist's Choice: Highlights from Turn Out the Stars
3. Last Waltz: The Final Recordings Live
4. You Must Believe in Spring
5. The Paris Concert, Edition One

Customer Reviews:

Better recording than "Letter to Evan" - but still not very good.......2005-12-06

Glorious, Indispensable--But Look Beneath the Title!.......2001-10-16

There are no fewer than 3 recordings of Bill Evans music bearing the title "Turn Out the Stars," all 3 recorded, moreover, during the final 3 months of his life. Two of the albums (which I have yet to listen to) refer to his last session at the Village Vanguard in Manhattan. This "Turn Out the Stars" was recorded later, on August 2, 1980 (Evans died Sept. 15) in London. It is at once extraordinary, breathtaking, and just a bit overwhelming. In one sense, it inspires fear. Can a level of creativity this intense and inaccessible to the rest of us (I'm a pianist) be attained without paying some terrible price? In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," the main character hears a gospel singer's joyous song and can only express bitterness and anger at the knowledge of the suffering required to produce such rapturous music. Listening to Evans' late music requires some resistance on the part of the listener, in some respects like hearing Coltrane's last recordings but with a heightened sense of "danger" due to the music's irresistible seductive pull.

Evans is pushing the envelope all the way on this particular session. On the title tune, for example, he manages to create breathless, endless streams of rising and spiraling notes that practically require him to locate keys not on any piano. This version of "My Romance," with Bill playing rubato, medium tempo, and double-time first "against" and then "with" the rhythm section, may be the best of all the versions on record. Whereas previously the pianist had used the piece partly as a showcase for LaBarbara's drums and Johnson's bass, on this occasion it's Evans message that matters most. Yet on both of the aforementioned tunes the pianist also exhibits masterly control of dynamics, providing contrasting passages of delicate, subtly shaded beauty.

It should be observed that technically this is far from a perfect record: the piano is slightly out of tune, the audio mix of the trio is never quite right, LaBarbara's percussion is poorly miked. The "Paris Concert," also recorded during Evans' last year, is overall a better album, capturing the interplay of the trio more effectively along with displaying Evans' impassioned lyricism on a superior-sounding instrument. But once you get caught up in the spellbinding singing of Evans on these final recordings, any considerations apart from the emanations of the artist's creative imagination are completely cast aside.

Essential Late Evans.......2001-02-23

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