1961 CD DISC 1:
1. Spoken Introduction
2. Gloria's Step - (take 1, interrupted)
3. Alice in Wonderland - (take 1)
4. My Foolish Heart
5. All of You - (take 1)
6. Announcement and Intermission
7. My Romance - (take 1)
8. Some Other Time
9. Solar
1961 Songs DISC 2:
1. Gloria's Step - (take 2)
2. My Man's Gone Now
3. All of You - (take 2)
4. Detour Ahead - (take 1)
5. Discussing Repertoire
6. Waltz For Derby - (take 1)
7. Alice in Wonderland - (take 2)
8. Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy)
9. My Romance - (take 2)
10. Milestones
1961 Album DISC 3:
1. Detour Ahead - (take 2)
2. Gloria's Step - (take 3)
3. Waltz For Derby - (take 2)
4. All of You - (take 3)
5. Jade Visions - (take 1)
6. Jade Visions - (take 2)
7. ... A Few Final Bars
Bill Evans - piano
Scott LaFaro - bass
Paul Motian - drums
Bill Evans Trio
Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (d)"Village Vanguard", NYC, matinee 1, June 25, 1961
| Gloria's Step (take 1) | Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3 | |
| Alice In Wonderland (take 1) | Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 140-2 | |
| My Foolish Heart | Riverside RLP 399 | |
| All Of You (take 1) | Milestone M 9125, MCD 9235-2 |
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Waltz For Debby (Riverside RLP 399; Fantasy OJC 210, OJCCD 210-2)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Fantasy OJCCD 140-2)
* Bill Evans - On Green Dolphin Street (Milestone MCD 9235-2)
Bill Evans Trio
Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (d): same personnel"Village Vanguard", NYC, matinee 2, June 25, 1961
| My Romance (take 1) | Riverside RLP 399 | |
| Some Other Time | - | |
| Solar | Riverside RLP 376 |
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RLP 376; Fantasy OJC 140, OJCCD 140-2)
= Bill Evans Live At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RS 3006)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
Bill Evans Trio
Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (d): same personnel"Village Vanguard", NYC, soiree 1, June 25, 1961
| Gloria's Step (take 2) | Riverside RLP 376 | |
| My Man's Gone Now | - | |
| All Of You (take 2) | - | |
| Detour Ahead (take 1) | Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 210-2 |
= Bill Evans Live At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RS 3006)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - More From The Vanguard (Milestone M 9125)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Waltz For Debby (Fantasy OJCCD 210-2)
Bill Evans Trio
Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (d): same personnel"Village Vanguard", NYC, soiree 2, June 25, 1961
| Waltz For Debby (take 1) | Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 210-2 | |
| Alice In Wonderland (take 2) | Riverside RLP 376 | |
| (I Loves You,) Porgy | Milestone M 47002; Fantasy OJCCD 210-2; Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3 | |
| My Romance (take 2) | Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 210-2 | |
| Milestones | Riverside RLP 399 |
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RLP 376; Fantasy OJC 140, OJCCD 140-2)
= Bill Evans Live At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RS 3006)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Waltz For Debby (Riverside RLP 399; Fantasy OJC 210, OJCCD 210-2)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
Bill Evans Trio
Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (d): same personnel"Village Vanguard", NYC, soiree 3, June 25, 1961
| Detour Ahead (take 2) | Riverside RLP 399 | |
| Gloria's Step (take 3) | Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 140-2 | |
| Waltz For Debby (take 2) | Riverside RLP 399 | |
| All Of You (take 3) | Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 140-2 | |
| Jade Visions (take 1) | - | |
| Jade Visions (take 2) | Riverside RLP 376 | |
| (...a few final bars) | Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3 |
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - More From The Vanguard (Milestone M 9125)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RLP 376; Fantasy OJC 140, OJCCD 140-2)
= Bill Evans Live At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RS 3006)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
SEE...
“Regarding the interpersonal and artistic relationship between Evans and LaFaro at the time, the pianist appeared even a bit irritated by the bass player's fiery nature. His desire to stay 'clean', and not mess around with dangerous experiments in drugs seemed almost to make Evans jealous: “Scott was in life right up to the hilt, he was intense in experiencing anything but bullshit, not wanting to waste time. He was discriminating about where quality might lie.” Concerning LaFaro's relationship with music, however, Evans added: “He didn't overlook traditional playing, realizing it could contribute a great deal to his ultimate product.”
Paul Motian recalled that the bass player “was practicing and playing all the time. ( ... ) His rate of improvement was so fast.” The great avant-garde pianist Paul Bley was later to observe that -"he was the only bassist in the world at that time who could play the melody to the complex charts.”
Evans himself found it amazing that LaFaro was so capable of intuiting where he was going, where his next thought was going to be. He wondered, “How did he know that I was going there.” LaFaro's explosive combination of talent, health and exuberant, almost defiant, vitality threw Evans off, putting him face to face with his own personal tragedy - his own human failure.
Evans admired the young man but, perhaps, envied a bit that self-confident unhesitating, doubt-free energy that LaFaro expressed both in his life-style and in his music.
The Village Vanguard Sessions well-illustrates the contrast between the iconoclast LaFaro and the introverted, subtly conservative Evans. The young bass player who lived life to the fullest “and tasted it down to the last drop wanted more than anything to take risks” (“I don’t like to look back because the whole point in jazz is doing it now.”) This he does with extraordinary results in All Of You, lingering a long time on a very dissonant minor second, that he "walks" confidently along the piece, refusing to stay consonant with the chord flow; or in Milestones, where LaFaro even succeeds in dragging Evans along on a couple of very daring excursions, from which the pianist withdraws immediately to go back to chiseling out his bewitching neo-Impressionistic harmonies. Also in this piece, the bass player seems deliberately to refuse to "walk" in 4/4 in the footsteps of Motian’s orthodox comping, preferring to depart with a solo line of his own that counterpoints what Evans' is doing with his piano. At the end of the tune, LaFaro fools around rather provocatively with some notes, to the laughter of the crowd, while Evans stays locked himself inside his dark, doubt-filled world.“I never listen to the words of songs, I am rarely aware of them,” he told Len Lyons in a 1976 interview. Yet it seems somewhat more than a coincidence that the text of Detour Ahead contains expressions like “You fool, you've set off in the wrong direction,” “turn back while there's still time,” and “don’t you see the danger signs.” Detour Ahead, along with My Foolish Heart, My Man’s Gone Now and Porgy, is one of the ballads that Evans chose to play that evening. It is hard to imagine that this was a purely arbitrary choice. In fact, his interpretation of the song is a truly touching interaction with a tune which he had surely heard Billie Holiday sing, lyrics not excluded.
Other roads, with their hidden perils, were waiting to seal Scott LaFaro's tragic fate. At the end of those historic sets, as the three were leaving the Village Vanguard, he had spontaneously expressed with great joy to Motian and Evans, “these two weeks have been exceptional, I've finally made an album I'm happy with!” On the night of July 5 1961, ten days after that magical evening, while going home after a visit to a friend, and having ignored the urgings of pianist-composer Gap Mangione to stay over and leave the next day, he lost control of his Chrysler and went off the road into a tree. Both he and the friend riding with him were killed instantly.This very gifted and unfortunate musician had, in a very short time, caused a complete revolution in conceptual/technical approach to bass playing. He blazed a new trail for the role of his instrument in small groups, expanding its solo possibilities through the exploitation of its upper register, the production of harmonics, the use of double and triple stops, and so on. Scott LaFaro's tragic death was a shock for Evans. A gray veil of sadness shrouded his already over-complicated existence, that “for several months went in a direction not at all constructive... musically everything seemed to stop. I didn't even play at home.”
Many years later, in 1984, the ever-zealous and thoughtful Orrin Keepnews published other takes from those extraordinary evenings. We find in these the same extremely high artistic level as those performances which even the exacting Evans had considered worthy of publication. These seven rediscovered performances are interesting for several aspects such as, in particular, a greater self-confidence as compared with those on the classic albums originally published from this concert. Perhaps this quality is related to the fact that Detour Ahead, Waltz For Debby, Jade Visions and Alice In Wonderland were revived in their first takes, all of them providing fresher interpretations than the previously published versions. It is as if, in approaching them, the three had experienced that higher intensity of emotion and concentration that almost always happens when you meet up with something that you have not handled for a long time finding it, therefore, somehow "new".
In other cases the opposite happens - as in All Of You, for example. The third take of this tune works better, more vigorous and appealing than the "classic" one, which was the second take played on that day. Here LaFaro's playing is more imaginative, provocative and audacious than ever, and Evans sounds more determined and energetic than usual. While the above-mentioned pieces betray a vague sense of boredom after all, repeating a piece after a very short time can, understandably, create a sense of deja vu causing a lowering of interest and a proportional increase in routine - surprisingly, in All Of You the reverse is true.
A key element in explaining this may be the presence in the audience of some fellow-musicians at the evening concert, who tacitly stimulated the three to perform at their best. In any case, these seven rediscovered pieces take nothing away and, if anything, only add to the magic of that special evening, highlighting, among other things, the enormous amount of propulsive energy that Motian was able to produce. He swings hard, chancing a more articulated multi-rhythmic approach than in the thirteen "classic" pieces. We feel, almost palpably, how that trio was a living organism: “a three-person voice as one voice,” Motian would say.
But now LaFaro was no longer there. That widening of musical horizons that the three had believed they could carry out together those concerts representing a first important leg of the journey - had been rudely interrupted."
(Bill Evans: Ritratto d’artista con pianoforte/Bill Evans: The Pianist as an Artist.Enrico Pieranunzi, Rome 1999, Stampa Alternativa)(thanks http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com !!!)
(Bill Evans: Ritratto d’artista con pianoforte/Bill Evans: The Pianist as an Artist.Enrico Pieranunzi, Rome 1999, Stampa Alternativa)(thanks http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com !!!)
Explorations [RLP-351; OJCCD 037-2] was recorded on February 2, 1961. The demanding, critical Evans was in no rush to record, something which made Keepnews very anxious. The Riverside label was going through an expansion and image-building phase in which Evans played no small part. Between 
How Deep is the Ocean
The roles are inverted for a while in Nardis. The theme stated, LaFaro soars into a magnificent solo (maybe this amazing performance had something to do with the fact that just two days earlier he had recorded the Atlantic album Ornette! with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell); Evans backs him with a simple but engagingly voiced melody, its tone permeated with that French Impressionist aura he loved. He is extremely sensitive in adapting to LaFaro's improvisational line, accurately choosing the height of the sounds and alternating open or close harmony to modulate the color of his voicing. When Bill's turn comes up his very colloquial solo proves how maximum results can be achieved with minimum means. His right hand, in fact, plays a few sparing notes loaded with an emotionally dense "specific weight", giving us a clear example of his ability to make the piano “a complete expressive musical medium.” LaFaro then takes up his own individual path, playing in counterpoint to the new melody that Evans is extemporaneously composing and interpreting on the piece's chord changes. Finally, in its coda, Nardis offers us a fleeting memory of the celebrated Prelude in C Sharp Minor, by Rachmaninov, whose marked Russian-ness he had always been very fond of. 
Beyond everything already said above, and the fact that the version that we are talking about was the first that Evans recorded in trio, Nardis deserves a special digression, which is a little story in itself. As any jazz student or professional jazz player knows, in every jazz tune collection Nardis is generally credited to Miles Davis even though, surprisingly, its composer never recorded it. According to a personal recollection of Evans', referring to a 1958 session with Cannonball Adderley, “Miles came along to the studio with it, and you could see that the guys were struggling with it. Miles wasn't happy with it either but after the date he said that I was the only one to play it in the way that he wanted. I must have helped his royalties over the years, because I have never stopped playing it. It has gone on evolving with every trio I have had!”
His musical processes are, of course, technically analyzable. In the first of the two selections, for instance, he never plays the original melody, landing there only at the very end of a sort of (re) compositional journey founded on completely new melodic lines. Warren Bernhardt, pianist and Evans' personal friend, states that despite the fact that he never plays the original melody here, he brings out its “quintessence.” The something that makes How Deep Is The Ocean (as it did Spring Is Here) an extremely significant musical event is to be found, in reality, in silence, in the unspoken - but for this reason spoken in a more penetrating way – “communication by implication.”
Although the concert takes place before an audience, the three seem to interact exclusively among themselves and relate only to the music. This contributes to the almost palpable, breath-taking density of these recordings where the musicians follow their itinerary of pure, almost merciless honesty. In the background you hear the chatter and laughter of the audience, but the trio pays no heed. Each of them is totally concentrated on his own sound while carefully listening to that of the others: the inner mechanism of the trio has been carried to its perfect balance. Each of the three completes a little revolution, My Foolish Heart (which Evans records for the first time here) being an excellent example. Here only the melody is played, but the calm sense of humble and participant singing with which Evans interprets Young's song is exalted by the parsimonious interventions of LaFaro, whose profound and resonant notes seem to anxiously await the melody in astonishment, and to dialogue with it. This performance is permeated with the sense of the yet-to-be-discovered, an unknown dimension in which Motian’s role is decisive; in fact, he plays with the melody, making of the delicate contact between his brushes and cymbals emotionally meaningful interjections that closely follow the "little story in music" that Evans is telling.
LaFaro is the real co-protagonist of this historical recording. His relationship with Evans is telepathic. He inserts himself naturally among the piano's silences and breaths, almost always stubbornly refusing to ‘walk’ as the majority of his colleagues did in those days. Even in All Of You, where he could do it, he breaks up the tempo, thus creating a contrast with Motian. Observing these performances a bit more closely, it is clear that some of the material has to do with Miles Davis, both because they use two of his compositions (Solar and Milestones) and because of some important performances of his (All Of You and Gershwin's My Man’s Gone Now and I Loves You Porgy). All of which is understandable given Evans’ recent association with the trumpeter.
Even though he was no longer part of the group, Miles Davis called him to record an album, that very quickly would prove to be one of the all-time masterpieces of jazz. Destined to become a cult album for the most informed of jazz fans, it was, and still is, also able to attract an audience usually drawn to other forms of music. Kind Of Blue [CL1355; CK64935] was recorded in two sessions, one on March 2nd and the other on April 22nd [1959]. Evans played on four selections, two per session: So What and Blue in Green for the first, and Flamenco Sketches and All Blues for the second. It was Evans who wrote the album’s liner notes, and it is very interesting to read with what penetrating clarity he analyzes the process of improvisation.
This album represents a unique moment of convergence in the artistic paths of these two artists - a bit like one of those intersecting of orbits, that kind of extraordinary astronomic event that happens only once every several hundred years. Evans' piano work had by now achieved the maximum in evocative refinement, the tone of his chords had all but dematerialized; it seemed to speak of far-off abstract things while, nevertheless, maintaining a kind of subterranean tension and a sense of restless expectation.
The circumstances as well as the solemn setting of the concert hall surely combined to make this one of his most intense performances of that entire decade. The pain brought on by this sad event triggered memories that sent him plummeting back in time. He played pieces that he hadn't played since the days of the trio with LaFaro, like Spring Is Here and My Foolish Heart. He sang his pain with extreme reserve but with a depth of expression that he had seemed to have lost. The titles of the pieces he chose alluded, as always, to his state of mind; I Should Care and Who Can I Turn To? (When Nobody Needs Me?) subtly suggest his loneliness, his "loss" - that destiny to be faced all alone, with darkness the single inescapable destination.
Israels, as compared with LaFaro, was another thing altogether. Although less spectacular (besides, who could ever have equaled that genius?) he proved, in his four-year collaboration with Evans, a remarkable musical intelligence, a highly developed capacity to deeply feel and interact with the expressive moods of his leader, and a solid, dynamic swing as well. These qualities contributed greatly to his overcoming Evans' doubts and put him back on the road to developing his trio. The group would never reach the peaks that it had with LaFaro, but often was to offer some very valid examples of a "modern" trio. The experimental approach of the period 1959-61 having already been tested and approved, Israels managed to place himself as one of the three voices of a group where interplay was by now common procedure. In spite of a lower degree of authority and rhythmic/harmonic audacity than LaFaro, Israels was capable of not limiting himself to the standard role of accompanist, and to not passively seconding what the pianist was doing.
Israels' playing, in fact, was essential, and never went out-of-bounds as LaFaro's could sometimes seem to go. He pushed Evans to tell his musical stories "completely', without interfering with them, and did not force the pianist in directions where, perhaps, he did not want to go at that particular moment. Precisely for this reason perhaps some of Evans' albums with Israels and Motian, or with Larry Bunker on the drums, reach artistic peaks just as high as those of his period with LaFaro. Of course, after LaFaro's death, the innovative impetus in which he had involved the reluctant Evans came to an abrupt halt. No link, not even an indirect one, existed between Israels and the most experimental expressions of the time (Coleman, Dolphy, etc.) The new bass player did not oppose Evans' conservative tendencies, on the contrary he adapted himself.
But the twofold pressure of Israels and the state of his finances brought him back to music. He had no choice - he needed money - and his main point of reference was none other than Keepnews himself. He was constantly asking for advances and usually the producer gave in, but not without some compensation - and this meant recordings. The risk, of course, was a sort of unplanned, mass-production which neither of them, for different reasons, wanted, but the situation offered few alternatives. So 1962 ended as one of Evans' most intensely active years in the recording studio with him working hard to repay Keepnews' generosity. He heavily increased his compositional activity, to the extent that he would carry his music notebook with him at all times, where ideas and themes could be tossed down on the road or during breaks in club performances. Show-Type Tune was practically completed on a New York subway train.
This sequence of "modes" recalls some musical atmospheres of Miles Davis' 
He returned periodically to Europe performing pieces recorded maybe some ten years earlier, always looking to extract new expressive content from them, or better, to inject them with a more and more personal feeling. His choices almost always responded to emotional stimuli and personal quest, and were sometimes quite cryptic and surprising. On the live album At The Montreux Jazz Festival of 1968, for which he won another Grammy Award, we find a Gershwin hit, Embraceable You, which Evans had never recorded before and would never do again; and another, The Touch Of Your Lips, which he had never recorded before in a trio, had appeared on Art Farmer's album 
However, Peacock is revealed as the real possible successor to LaFaro. His solos are daring excursions, in which the given harmony of the theme does not serve for "agreement" but for opposition. His irrepressible energy seems, as had happened with LaFaro, to make Evans uncomfortable, who goes off into a corner to listen to his partner's exuberant soloing, almost incredulous at so much iconoclastic vitality.
Peacock, after his brief stint with Evans, joined Albert Ayler and Don Cherry, two of the most outrageous representatives of the jazz scene of the mid-1960s. By the mid-60s Evans was beginning to be more visible on the European scene. In 1964, along with Israels and Bunker, he made a successful tour of Scandinavia, where over the years he was gaining increasing fame and popularity among jazz fans. The following year he went to France, where he would return many times and where his art has continued to be highly appreciated. The assistance of Helen Keane, by now his artistic "counselor" in addition to being his manager, was starting to bear fruit. Thanks to her Evans was able to win himself an affectionate audience at a time when the prevailing trends in jazz were going in a completely different direction, and in which the dominant and most influential figure on the scene was still that of John Coltrane."
