Some Other Time (The Lost Session From The Black Forest) [Double Album]

"Check out the Double DSD of the brilliant performance and recording, Bill Evans' The Lost Sessions on 2xHD. Fantastic work on these transfers gents! Available from NativeDSD.com.

You get a delicious sense of every tidbit of Evans' playing, the feel and edge and the attack of the keys. A really keen presentation."

"Bill Evans...jazzic piano lyricism of the highest order. He needs no further introduction from me, certainly. Note that this track, “Baubles, Bangles, and Beads,” familiar to fans of Sinatra and Jobim, is taken from the recently discovered “Lost Sessions” double-length sessions (93 minutes!) that were recorded in Germany in 1968. The idea was to release them as a double-LP set on MPS, but somehow this was never done. Their rediscovery and reissue by 2xHD in Double DSD is a real treat to jazz lovers who really dig Bill Evans...as I do. In Double DSD, this performance shines: a compelling performance and an exceptional recording. Any Bill Evans fan will want this entire album in their DSD collection!"
- from the booklet of the album NDSD006 'Positive Feedback DSD Sampler'

This enthralling session by the late Bill Evans (a crucial pianistic influence on stars from McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock to Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau) was recorded five days after a famous performance at the 1968 Montreux jazz festival by Evans, bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette. Verve’s Montreux live recording won a Grammy, but this studio session has been in the vaults ever since. DeJohnette, who spent only six months with Evans (Some Other Time thus becomes only the second album to document the partnership) and would go on to play on Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew the next year, was a more elementally forceful drummer than the pianist usually employed – but his fire and his robust tenderness affected Evans’s attitude to drums from then on. DeJohnette the cymbal texturalist is in evidence on classics such as On Green Dolphin Street and In a Sentimental Mood, and the drummer’s more muscular intensity pushes the leader into controlled abandon on How About You? The album is not only exquisite jazz playing, but a document of a step-change in the great Bill Evans’s trio conception. 4 Stars

Some Other Time is a newly unearthed Bill Evans studio album, initially recorded in 1968 in Germany but not released until this month. It still sounds fresh and alive almost 50 years later.

Some Other Time: The Lost Session From the Black Forest was recorded when Evans was on tour in Europe with a trio that included Eddie Gomez on bass and, on drums, a young Jack DeJohnette, who would go on to much greater fame with Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, and as a leader himself. It was cut between stops on a European tour by German producer Joachim-Ernst Berendt, with the idea that the rights and a release plan would be figured out later. This particular group had only been documented on record just once, on At the Montreux Jazz Festival, recorded five days prior to this date. So the existence of an unheard studio album by the trio is a significant addition to the Evans story.

The piano/bass/drums trio setting is where Evans did his most important and lasting work. Eddie Gomez, heard on this album, was a steady partner of Evans' for a decade, and the level of empathy between the two players is something to behold. On "What Kind of Fool Am I?," Gomez's dancing lines darts between Evans' bass notes, almost serving as a third hand on the piano. On the immortal title track, Gomez seems like half a conversation, accenting and commenting on Evans' melodic flourishes. For his part, DeJohnette offers tasteful and low-key accompaniment, heavy on the brushwork and soft textures on cymbals—he was more of a role-player at this point in his career. But the three together feel like a true unit.

Evans' art has endured in part because he has a brilliant combination of formal sophistication and accessibility; critics and his fellow musicians heard the genius in his approach to chords, his lightness of touch, and his open-eared support of others in his band, while listeners could put on his records and simply bask in their beauty, how Evans' continual foregrounding of emotion made the sad songs extra wrenching and the happy ones extra buoyant.

It plays out like a tale of espionage. In Bremen, Germany, more than five-thousand miles from his Los Angeles home, American producer Zev Feldman, has a chance meeting with the son of a late German jazz producer. In a parking lot, the German plays a single track of music on his car stereo; a forgotten recording from tapes almost fifty years old. Feldman, upon hearing more of the tapes, decides he needs to get this out to the world. It is not quite that straight-forward and it takes the better part of two years to complete the deal. The result is a rare Bill Evans studio album, Some Other Time: The Lost Session From the Black Forest.

The never before released album features Evans, bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette and represents DeJohnette's only studio recording with Evans. The content is trademark Evans in style, with alternative versions of "You're Gonna Hear From Me" and duo (with Gomez) and trio versions of "Baubles, Bangles & Beads." The difference between this and Evans' better known trio is in the influence of a young DeJohnette who plays with a lightness on the snare that belies his ability to guide the direction of the music. In comparison, the Gomez/DeJohnette trio opens Evans to more consistent cadences and longer lines than what was typical of the Paul Motian/Scott LaFaro trio. The differences may be subtle, but they place Some Other Time in a light that provides a somewhat different perspective on Evans' creative evolution.

The animated "You Go To My Head" opens the first disc and sets the tone for a mostly upbeat collection of twenty-one compositions, relying deeply on well-known standards. There are, of course, the kind of ballads that were mainstays in the Evans repertoire. "Very Early," "I'll Remember April," "My Funny Valentine" and "Turn Out the Stars" stand out among the more reflective pieces. Another highlight is "Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)," demonstrating some of Evans' exceptional improvisational skills. Evans also offers some other fine solo performances with "These Foolish Things" and an unfinished "It's All Right With Me" being noteworthy.

Gomez worked with Evans for some time but DeJohnette, for only six months in 1968. It was, however, at a time when Evans was overflowing with novel ideas and establishing himself as a force for change in jazz. Moreover, Evans was on the cusp of moving away from swinging lyricism to becoming a musical beat-poet. DeJohnette's sense of interchange and his propulsive motion, and layering technique lent itself to the new direction that Evans was working toward, and that influence remained after the drummer's brief tenure with Evans. Some Other Time: The Lost Session From the Black Forest is more than a nice-to-have addition to the Evans catalog; it is an excellent collection that shines a new light on one of the most revered artists in jazz.