The Very Last Performance: A CD review

By Chris Kroger

I've not had the good fortune yet to be in any Bill Evans bootleg loop, so whenever these former well-known boots become available as this new release from Domino Records has, I am ever eager to hear it. To my ears, some of my favorite stuff of Bill's is that which was not officially recorded, or where he didn't know he was being recorded. This recording of September 10, 1980 is apparently an honest-to-God bootleg*. It sounds like the microphone was maybe close to Marc Johnson's amp, but the piano is hearable and Joe LaBarbera's drums are a little muddy in the mix. It sounds like too much bass to be a tape made off the PA mix. Could be from a radio broadcast. The pitch is a bit fast, but not a semi-tone.

Regarding the performance: this is the work of a man very present and accounted for.

When I listen to Bill Evans -- as player or composer -- I hear a man describing what he sees, telling me what he knows, and sharing his realization. I detect no searching quality in his message, but hear confidence, certainty and knowledge -- the playing itself, wisdom. Music like that, communication like that -- especially from a master who is focusing pure intent -- has the ability to open a little crack in one's world where maybe a glimpse of something more fundamental than one's own present perception is possible.

This newest release of excerpts from his final sets, recorded on September 10, 1980 at the former Fat Tuesday’s club in New York, shows Bill right there, doing what he did (and does) right up to the physical end. He is communicating tirelessly with the perfect knowledge that such a task, a work, is truly impossible. Listen to "If You Could See Me Now" -- the excitement, the celebration. Listen to "Bill's Hit Tune", the rollicking, controlled excellence of his choruses, the unabashed joy in the playing. Listen to "Turn Out The Stars" and hear him once again take a sad song and make it better. He's trying to tell you something, something that words would only mar the understanding of.

I used to chafe at Bill's comments regarding lyrics and thinking of singers as just like horns, but these days I'm beginning to see that what Bill has to offer can barely be put into music -- how much less so words? (Notably, the two lyrics he did write of which I am aware -- "It's Love, It's Christmas" and "Letter To Evan" -- each is profound in its own way and points to something deeper than surface experience.)

This problem of communication, -- wanting to communicate, yet not being able to be received -- is inherent in higher knowledge. How do you show color to the blind? Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea is the perfect understanding of this. When the old man finally returns to shore with the shark eaten carcass of the great fish, the onlookers marvel -- at a mere skeleton. Hardly a one will even have what it takes to think to imagine what the fight was like, what the true experience of that old man and that fish and the ocean is. I think this is why applause never seemed to mean much to Bill -- it had really nothing to do with his work, this marveling over “skeletons”.

The CD liner notes include two brief excerpts from a 1965 jazz magazine interview with Bill. Here is part of one:

Q: Do you like people?

Bill: Yes, but I don't seem to communicate well with them.

Q: Is it important to communicate with people?

Bill: I dedicate my life to it.

Q: But sometimes in concerts or in clubs you fail to.

Bill: Of course. like in any other profession, there are good and bad moments.

Q: Does that disturb you?

Bill: Of course. I feel responsible.

Q: Is there another art form you consider superior to music?

Bill: No, not by a long shot.

Now take another listen to "Turn Out The Stars". Hear how every note rings forth from the piano, from Bill, from God-knows-where, with pure, beautiful, passionate intent. Hear him rein it all in on the out chorus, the final four bars, back to the original ii-V into A minor... two more beautiful bars to go and – damn, if the audience doesn't just erupt the first "chance" they get. It blew my mind when I heard it. Bill just stops -- mid-statement, just stops. Bill is no more playing for himself than he is playing for them. He's not even playing for it -- he is It. He's an honest conduit allowing light for those who make their hearts and minds available -- he ran no trips on the audience demanding adoration or even that they listen attentively. He just showed up and, as he said more than once, did his “professional best”. Next tune.

Of course, I recommend this CD for Evans fans, but it's probably not something for the general jazz listener. Marc and Joe are perfect and beautiful as always, but the drums suffer in the mix. Conspicuously absent from this release, as anyone interested in Bill's last trio would recognize, are "Re: Person I Knew", "My Romance", and "Nardis". I don't know if they appeared on the original circulating tapes or not or if they were recorded at all or even played that night. Hearing the man in full command at the piano on the cuts offered here makes my mouth water for the possibility of hearing a "Nardis" from that night. The final "Nardis". The very last.

Bill Evans was a rarity, a master whose vehicle for communication was music and whose message was as direct a pointing to reality as is possible. This new release shows him doing it as wholeheartedly in his final performance as in any other set on any other night in any other city. The body may be gone now, but the presence remains and continues to inform.
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*Editor’s Note: The authenticity of at least two of the tracks on the CD is in question, having apparently been taken from the final Vanguard recordings of June 1980. Further research is ongoing.

Chris Kroger is a musician and composer living and working in Denver. Some of his compositions can be heard at www.myspace.com/chriskroger

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