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At the time this program of two-piano improvisations was recorded early in 1959, Bill Evans was poised on the threshold of a career of extraordinary promise, and fellow explorer Bob Brookmeyer, no mean pianist himself, was much more widely known in jazz circles as a valve trombonist and composer-arranger. Evans had been on the national jazz scene for only a short time, his first job with Jerry Wald’s sextet in 1956 followed by stints with a number of New York-based units, among them those of Tony Scott, Don Elliott, George Russell and others, culminating in his joining the Miles Davis group in 1958, a move that inevitably focused a great deal of attention on the young pianist. His first two albums for Riverside Records, critical successes that confirmed the brilliance and originality of his conception, had been in release for some time, but the broad acceptance he was to receive as a result of his association with Davis was just around the corner.
Brookmeyer’s professional experiences over the previous decade had been both more extensive and varied. Starting as a clarinetist, he later took up piano and trombone and, following studies at the Kansas City Conservatory and military service, he joined the Tex Beneke band in 1951, later performing with Claude Thornhill, Ray McKinley, Louis Prima, Terry Gibbs and Woody Herman. In 1953 he joined Stan Getz in one of the most enjoyable and thoroughly musical groups the saxophonist ever has headed. During that year Brookmeyer established his reputation in jazz circles. He consolidated this even further when the following year he replaced trumpeter Chet Baker in the greatly popular Gerry Mulligan Quartet and, a bit later, the sextet that Mulligan formed. He remained with Mulligan for several years before coming East with the interesting trio of clarinetist-saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre (guitarist Jim Hall was the third member) and settling in New York.
There he soon established himself as a busy member of the jazz community, performing with many ad hoc groups for club and recording dates, leading units of his own for varying periods, and participating in studio sessions too numerous to catalog. It was during these years that his writing skills were most actively deployed, and many a session of the period was graced with Brookmeyer’s witty, inventive and always swinging charts. His knowledge of the traditions of jazz was intelligent and comprehensive and, for this reason he was able to write for, and perform comfortably with an extraordinarily wide range of ensembles. Of the two he was, at the time, the more widely known performer.
It was not a likely, let alone obvious pairing, this recorded meeting of the introspective, austerely lyrical Evans and the puckish extrovert Brookmeyer. yet, as you’ll hear, it worked beautifully, a tribute to the acumen, or just plain intuition of United Artists producer Jack Lewis. It was his idea to have them attempt several two-piano numbers prior to undertaking what was to have been a conventional quartet date featuring Brookmeyer’s trombone and Evans’ piano. While the two were no strangers to one another’s playing, and earlier had worked together in a quintet Brookmeyer organized for an engagement at the Half Note, they had never joined forces pianistically before this recording session. In fact, the first inkling they had of Lewis’ intention was when they showed up at the studio at the appointed time and found not one, but two pianos positioned for recording.
Once started, however, the two responded so fully to the challenge of the situation that Brookmeyer never got around to unpacking his horn. The resulting performances comprise one of the most unusual, and unusually invigorating, recordings either has undertaken. Curiously enough, given the striking success of the venture, the album has been out of print almost since its original release as THE IVORY HUNTERS (UAS 6033). Its appearance now after more than two decades restores to print one of the rarest and most rewarding recordings of Evans’ long, sustained creative career and reminds us anew of Brookmeyer’s impressive skills as a pianist of uncommon intelligence, lucidity and resourceful, witty creativity.
The key word here is spontaneity. While this is claimed for virtually every jazz recital instantaneous improvisation being one of the identifying characteristics of jazz performance very few possess this cherished quality to the preconceptions, no idea of what would be played and how it should proceed. Any ideas that either might have had about the proposed original session good tunes for a trombone-piano-rhythm lineup, how they might be structured, and so on—had to be discarded as soon as the two-piano idea was suggested and tentatively agreed to. Whatever was worked out between the two pianists and their two co-workers, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Connie Kay, the rhythmic engine of the Modern Jazz Quartet, was done on the spot, in response to a new, totally unexpected playing situation.
“I Got Rhythm,” the first tune to be recorded, was done without benefit of any preliminary discussion. The two pianists simply sat down and immediately began to communicate with one another, sculpting the shape of the performance as they played, through responsive, engaged interplay. Their success in bringing off this demanding discipline is easily gauged: listen to how fresh-sounding, exciting and full of surprise they are able to make this over familiar vehicle. Having thus demonstrated to their satisfaction that the approach could work, Brookmeyer sketched out some routines for several numbers and showed Evans and Heath the chord changes to “As Time Goes By,” but otherwise the group’s music was wholly, spontaneously improvised.
Technically and temperamentally the pianists were ideally equipped to undertake music making of this challenging sort. Shortly after these recordings were made, fellow pianist Warren Bernhardt observed of Evans: “Everything he plays seems to be the distillation of the music…Pianistically, he’s beautiful. He never seems to be hung up in any way in doing anything he wants to do either technically or harmonically. You can voice a given chord many different ways, but he always seems to find the correct way. When he’s confronted with a choice on the spur of the moment of improvisation, he doesn’t have to wonder which voicing is best. He knows. And he is physically capable of executing it immediately. It’s as if the line between his brain and his fingers were an unusually direct one.”
“It’s an accumulated thing,” Evans explained. “The art lies in developing enough facility to voice well any new thought. It’s taken me 20 years of hard work and playing experience to do as well with it as I can. There’s no short cut. It takes a lot of time and study.” Liner notes continue… |
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| | Honeysuckle Rose | | | As Time Goes By | | | The Way You Look Tonight | | | It Could Happen to You | | | The Man I Love | | | I Got Rhythm | |
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Bob Brookmeyer, piano (left channel)
Bill Evans, piano (right channel)
Percy Heath, bass
Connie Kay, drums |
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