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Today’s music moment comes about only because of today’s news. The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings 1961, the outstanding performance by the Bill Evans Trio, is one of 25 new additions to the National Recording Registry.
In making the announcement, the Library of Congress said the five sets the trio performed on June 25, 1961, “are recognized as some of the greatest live recordings in the history of jazz.” I’ll certainly second that. In honor of this event receiving deserved recognition for its role in American music, I have combined two reviews I wrote when a box set of the recordings was released in the U.S. to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Evans’s September 15, 1980, death:
 It is likely that no one — not even the participants — knows when an extraordinary musical moment is going to occur. That was probably the case when pianist Bill Evans, bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian showed up at New York City’s Village Vanguard on Sunday, June 15, 1961.
They knew they would be recording two afternoon matinees and the three sets they would perform that night. More than 40 years later, jazz fans owe a debt to the fact Evans agreed to record that day. What was captured on tape borders on legendary. While parts of the recordings were released on vinyl later that year as Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby, Riverside has now released a three-CD box set that contains the entirety of the material in the order it was recorded during the day’s five performances.
Given the ultimate result, things did not get off to an auspicious start. About a minute into “Gloria’s Step,”‘ the first tune of the first matinee, the power to the recording equipment went out. Although it was quickly restored, even that gap exists for posterity in this compilation. Thankfully, that initial breakdown was not indicative of what was to come.
What the entirety of these CDs reveal is the higher level to which Evans, LaFaro and Motian took the jazz trio. This is not LaFaro and Motian serving as a rhythm section while Evans dominates. This is a sublime yet intensive improvised musical dialogue amongst partners, a dialogue at which listeners can only marvel. At times, the interplay between LaFaro and Evans is as if they are speaking to each other in another musical dimension, transported there in part by Motian.
LaFaro is not simply in the background keeping time or laying down a bass line. Even when not up front — and Evans gives LaFaro plenty of chances to be up front — his performance is as much a force in the entirety as Evans’s own inimitable style. And when LaFaro is up front, Evans trades roles easily. As he ‘comps’ to whatever musical course LaFaro charts, he not only retains and reminds us of the elements of the underlying theme but lays the groundwork for his own subsequent improv when the lead is handed back to him.
While LaFaro and Evans often gracefully change rhythms and moods in the course of any one tune, this is done with and through Motian as the backbone. And in keeping everyone on course expressively, Motian he is never intrusive or overstated. His eloquent performances should serve as an exemplar for any percussionist.
Given the pervasive excellence of the box set, it is unfair to highlight one or more songs over others. Still, the performance of “Waltz for Debbie” in the trio’s closing set — which was released on the LP of the same name — is a masterpiece. It is a prime example of the importance and legacy of this evening and this trio to modern jazz. And hindsight adds a tragic power to this. LaFaro died in a car accident less than two weeks after this recording, making the Vanguard performances this incomparable trio’s last public dates.
Taken in its discrete sessions or as a whole, this set can help create a true jazz fantasy. Take these CDs, put on your headphones, close your eyes and listen. You will be in the Vanguard, hearing the clinking glasses, the occasional bar conversation and wanting to stare daggers at the woman who laughs a bit too loudly as some comment at her table, seemingly oblivious to the marvelous performance to which serendipity has brought her.
Any true fan of the jazz trio would have loved to be in her place. Unable to do that, consider this release a slice of heaven in a box.
It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling.
Bill Evans, Liner notes, Sunday at the Village Vanguard
Maybe this is an old fart rant or another display of naïveté but some things really do outrage me. The latest is the NYT article about at least one law school applying “do as I say, not as I do” to ethics and honesty.
According to the article, Loyola Law School Los Angeles is “retroactively inflating its grades, tacking on 0.333 to every grade recorded in the last few years. The goal is to make its students look more attractive in a competitive job market.” At the outset, it seems a bit ironic that this is coming from a law school that prides itself on being a Catholic institution whose mission includes “educat[ing] men and women who will be leaders of both the legal profession and society, demonstrating in their practice of law and public service the highest standards of personal integrity [and] professional ethics.”
Where, I wonder, does integrity and ethics fit in with giving false information to potential employers and falsifying student records? (Before someone thinks I use the term “falsify” too loosely, among its definitions is “To make false by altering or adding to.” If a student’s official transcript shows a 3.1 grade in a class, doesn’t changing it to a 3.4 make it false?)
But irony aside, Loyola isn’t alone. The article indicates that over the last several years “at least 10 law schools have deliberately changed their grading systems to make them more lenient,” including schools like New York University, Georgetown, UCLA, USC and Vanderbilt. The story is unclear whether any of these schools made retroactive changes in grades, which certainly seems far more ethically questionable.
And why do these law schools engage in these practices? “Law schools seem to view higher grades as one way to rescue their students from the tough economic climate — and perhaps more to the point, to protect their own reputations and rankings.” I guess in the view of those law schools that means integrity and honesty consists of holding students to a lesser standard or that a particular score in a class wasn’t really the score.
Sure, society can say this simply reflects grade inflation (excuse me, “grade reform”) throughout the education system and that the legal job market focuses too much on grades than the person. But how in the world can law schools profess to stand for integrity, ethics and honesty if they have no compunction about altering grades retroactively?
Yet another giant leap forward in the public perception of the legal profession.
Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn’t blow in the wind or change with the weather.
John D. MacDonald
Some may recall that retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter bought a new home when he retired because the farmhouse he lived in wasn’t structurally strong enough to hold the thousands of books he owned. One of his former law clerks took steps to perhaps stop the problem from recurring.
According to annual financial disclosure statements filed by the justices this month, former law clerk Julius Genachowski, now chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave Souter a Kindle. As CNN notes, though, Souter earned a reputation over the years as being suspicious of technology gadgets. Although a neighbor said Souter’s farmhouse had no phone lines, author Jeffrey Toobin reported in his 2007 book, The Nine, that “Souter had a telephone and a fountain pen but no answering machine, fax, cell phone, or e-mail.” Toobin also wrote that although Souter once received a television set, he “never plugged it in.”
No word on whether Souter has downloaded anything to the Kindle — or even turned it on.
UPDATE: Perhaps more justifying is the announcement after this was posted that B&N has not only cut the price of a Nook it has a wi-fi only one for even less, something attractive to those of us who don’t use the AT&T network.
…it is clear that when enough people start reading them, electronic books will do for the ophthalmologists what taffy and caramels did for dentists.
Martin Arnold, “Making Books: From Gutenberg To Cyberstories”
Blog Headline of the Week (and strong contender for WTF? story of the week year)
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
- While I can’t claim to be a fan of the Cato Institute and cannot judge the methodology, I did find The Moocher Index interesting. (Popehat)
- Fringe, one of about three network television shows I DVR, gets some love from the NYT.
If you listen to a song and get an image in your head, and then you go home and watch MTV and the image they’re showing is the same as the one in your head, kill yourself.
Lewis Black
Florida attorney barred from visiting client in jail both with and without bra.
A 34-year-old Nevada woman was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of lewdness with a minor under 14 after kissing a friend’s 13-year-old child, putting his hand on her breast, and offering to have sex with him. She was wearing a bra.
Since there seems to be a trend here, a woman who claims to have the largest breasts in Russia suing a Swiss airline, claiming she injured them when she hit the seat in front of her during some midair turbulence. The woman says she normally flies business class to accommodate her chest size but, to quote the news article, the distance between the seats on this flight “forced her to use her breasts as airbags.” (The Legal Satyricon)
Returning to Florida, after being arrested for choking his wife, a man offered the the police officer an interesting defense: “If you were married, you would understand.” (Jonathan Turley)
A 74-year-old Boise, Idaho, woman arrested after pouring mayonnaise in a county library’s book drop box “is a person of interest in a yearlong spree of condiment-related crimes of the same sort.” (MobyLives)
Karmic justice? “A Balinese teenager caught in the act of intercourse with a cow passed out on Friday when he was forced to marry the animal in a ceremony witnessed by hundreds of curious onlookers.” (Dumb as a Blog)
Why people hate lawyers, ad infinitum: Lawyers who settled a class action lawsuit over leakage in VW sunroofs for $8 million in cash (about $1.60 per class member) are seeking $23 million in attorneys’ fees.
An odd twist on the perfectly understandable “no sex with clients” rule. Saying she’s your client when she isn’t and having sex in a prison interview room will also get you disbarred. (Above the Law)
…were we to act but in cases where no contrary opinion of a lawyer can be had, we should never act.
Thomas Jefferson, Sept. 20, 1808
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