Jazz for the highest demands, on the highest level. Anyone who, like Bill Evans and his trio, manages to make even the simplest, most stereotypical melodies sound like fresh jazz standards has truly arrived on the musician’s Mount Olympus.

This sole recording with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Paul Motian shows Mr. Evans at his cheerful precise best, introverted and full of soul.The trio sounds like it hasn’t played with anyone else in years, the recording deep and clear, Mr. Evans’ move from his regular label Riverside to Verve perfectly accomplished. A true jazz trio masterpiece, to listen to again and again.

The music and playing of Bill Evans has a confident grandeur that the distinction in the liner notes seems superfluous and overambitious: the reference to modern pianists who are apparently bored with music and ‘bang on the piano like three-year-olds’ – who benefits from this reference? That Bill Evans doesn’t play like a pianist like Cecil Taylor, for example, but both are masters of their craft in their own league – you don’t need to read that, you can hear it immediately.

Anyway, always with jazz: listen and learn.

Stefan Mohr