Search - Bill Evans :: Practice Tape No.1

Caveat Emptor

Stephen Silberman | SF, CA USA | 02/17/2001

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Frankly, I think Evans the perfectionist would be mortified if he knew this was put out as a record, no matter how well intentioned. The sound quality is pretty awful, and the performances were clearly never meant to be heard outside the pianist's apartment.Could be of value to other players attempting to get inside Evans' head and fingers; not for the casual listener, or even for the appreciator of what Evans might have been trying to preserve by not putting out performances this ragged."

From The Producer, The Son

Evan Evans | Calabasas, CA United States | 06/06/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album was a concept that I came up with in an attempt to preserve my father's archival material. I expect there to be really two ends of the spectrum with it critically and I already am seeing that here. You either despise it as a Bill Evans purist and wish that it never happened (even though it did in BE's own apartment none-the-less), or you praise it for every ounce of value that it has (and there is a lot there as other's will attest too one day.)I didn't expect accolades for the album even though I put a lot of creativity into it. On May 5th, 2001 I accepted an award from the AFIM (Indie Grammies) for Best Cover Design of the Year 2000 releases. Wow. I was deeply honored, and mentioned my mentaur Lalo Schifrin in my speech who was in the audience in the Best Big Band album category. Lalo came over and congratulated us (me and my wife) after comin gback to the table.So, on top of the album being of interest musically and archivally, you should also look at the design of the cover as a milestone in the Millenial year of CD releases. Unfortunately we missed the Grammy deadline for this category by 3 days last year and so we can never know how NARAS would have though of it, but we dream it would have been good. :-)"

Show more respect to Bill.

Stephen Silberman | 04/05/2003

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Although the incomplete takes in this CD are all marvelous, this is what Bill Evans did not want to happen. Whenever his record was released, Bill carefully chose the best take of the songs which is appropriate for publication. Bill did not even put out many of the absolutely fine complete takes which he thought was not appropriate for publication according to his high standard. Bill was also notorious for his rejection to the recommendations of playing money making pop songs in 70s. Bill tried hard to preserve his high quality music throughout his career.What his son did for money making here gravely put off Bill Evans. I am sobbing for poor Bill."