Infused in Evansiana pianist Randy Ingram is joined by bassist Rufus Reid and drummer Joe LaBarbera.
I found a Bill Evans record in the bookcase and was listening to it while drying my hair when I realized that it was the record I had played in Naoko’s room on the night of her birthday, the night she cried and I took her in my arms. That had happened only six months earlier, but it felt like something from a much remoter past. Maybe it felt that way because I had thought about it so often – too often, to the point where it had distorted my sense of time.
– Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (1987)
Re: person we all think we somehow knew
CONTINUOUSLY INSPIRING
Whether plucking a quote from one of the world’s most acclaimed novelists touched by its charms, watching a film inspired by the idiom or hearing well considered repertory work involving classics from its world reprised, the modern jazz piano trio remains one of the most inexhaustible jazz permutations.
Since Bill Evans (1929-1980) as a chief personification of its central flame – and both Reid and La Barbara re: the person in question, they both played with and knew – transformed the role of the pianist within the trio most famously through his landmark collaborations with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, the emphasis if tempted to be grandiloquent has shifted from hierarchy to conversation, from accompaniment to collective invention.
Oh go on then, why not. And you might say, fine. But there are, a creeping note of well informed if unwelcome undertone of crunching doubt intrudes, lots of Bill Evans themed albums out there. Most of them are, echo that emotion and throw in an even more enthusiastic ditto, absolutely, again, fine. For instance English pianist Paul Edis’ album with Israeli singer Noa Levy this year, reviewed above, injected vocals into the blend and worked beautifully.
There is always room for more. Among the Evans tribute albums I most love is Brazilian pianist and singer Eliane Elias’ Something for You from 2008. Again, like the Edis/Levy approach, that had some vocals plus an Evans connection in the presence of Bass Desires and late period Evans player Marc Johnson and, even, on one track Evans himself.
In the context of Sound Within: A Celebration of Bill Evans, “sound within” ceases to be just a poetic title and becomes something a bit more profound.
Ingram has form with Evans. He even played him in a Swedish film released over a decade ago called Monica Z aka Waltz for Monica about Monica Zetterlund, the singer Evans worked with so luminously.
Inspired by how Evans always played from a deeply honest, emotionally raw core, “sound within” you could claim represents a conscious rejection of superficiality.
That’s not at all a fanciful thought once you dip into Evansiana as it is a realm with its own aura and mystique. It also touched and contributed lots to the mood of Kind of Blue, one of the most beloved jazz albums in history. But it is more than any one album. It is also about looking past the surface level of celebrity, complex harmonic tricks, or branding, and focusing entirely on a space of quiet, unfiltered truth. Of course the irony isn’t lost on me that doing a tribute to a musician is, however you dress it up, a certain kind of para social fixation. And yet there are benefits in that process: the adhesiveness of a glow that somehow clings on to the person paying tribute.
All hail
It is like a halo effect. You can almost hear the “zing” and find yourself making an invisible circle in the air when the act of paying tribute magically works.
Great is Ingram’s faithfulness by interweaving his own contemporary original compositions with Evans classics, Ingram taps into the foundational values of Evans’ aesthetic – honesty, lyricism, and vulnerability – while letting the actual music flow from his own unique perspective.
The “sound within” becomes the silent, collective current flowing between three musicians who are listening just as deeply as they are playing. It is the sound of an honest, unfolding conversation where ego is set aside, allowing a rich, quiet truth to resonate from the inside out.
The Evans connection is made explicit from the opening track, ‘Turn Out the Stars.’
One of Evans’ most enduring compositions, it has long been associated with the pianist’s reflective late-period repertoire, appearing in various interpretations throughout his career.
Ingram approaches it faithfully with an awareness of its history but without reverential weight.
A technical tour de force disguised as a tender ballad, built around a highly sophisticated, 37-bar through-composed structure that rejects standard song forms the tune’s harmonic genius lies in its sheer tonal instability, taking the listener through a rapid sequence of deceptive cadences that cycle through five distinct keys in descending thirds in the first 12 bars alone.
This dense chromaticism is briefly relieved by a lyrical middle section that introduces lush, suspended pedal points, creating a pastoral breath of fresh air before descending back into the complex, dark dominant alterations of the finale.
There are clear echoes here throughout the album of Evans recordings such as Waltz for Debby and Sunday at the Village Vanguard, the classic 1961 Riverside sessions with LaFaro and Motian that established the piano trio as a genuinely democratic ensemble.
Those recordings remain central not simply because of Evans’ harmonic imagination but because of the extraordinary level of interaction between the three musicians. Ingram understands this distinction.
Rufus Reid [now 82] in the clip talking about playing with Bill Evans and Philly Joe Jones
That philosophy is particularly evident on ‘My Foolish Heart,’ a standard forever linked with Evans through the celebrated version on Waltz for Debby and later with Tony Bennett.
The inclusion of ‘Ezz-Thetic’ broadens the historical perspective.
Above, Joe La Barbera [now 78] with Evans and Marc Johnson in Rome in 1979
Associated with the modernist developments of the 1950s and recorded by musicians including Evans recording with its writer George Russell, the composition places Evans’ influence within a wider continuum of post-bop experimentation.
Here Ingram suggests that the Evans legacy was never only about ballad playing or lyrical introspection; it was also about harmonic curiosity and the expansion of what a small ensemble could achieve.
Ingram isn’t reimagining anything. Even his own tunes are faithful to Evans’ style.
Throughout Sound Within, the Alaska born fortysomething Ingram demonstrates a deep understanding of space. The production reinforces this aesthetic.
A record that is very hard to dislike on any significant level.
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