Search - Bill Evans :: At Shelly's Manne-Hole (Slip)

Sub-par remaster; (thankfully) not indispensable Evans.

Samuel Chell | Kenosha,, WI United States | 05/06/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"For Bill Evans, a mundane session; for other pianists, perhaps a career highlight. The playing is competent, conservative, and quite mainstream, as though Bill were reprising Bud Powell rather than recapturing the luminous music of the celebrated Vanguard sessions or moving forward to the passionate, expressionist style of his final years. Chuck Israels is given almost as much solo time as Bill would soon be allocating to Eddie Gomez (i.e. too much), which is more the pity on this bass-heavy 2005 remaster. The piano sound is suspiciously Van Gelderish, even though this is supposed to be a Riverside recording. Booming, sub-wooferish, indistinguishable bass tones plus a dead, artificial piano sound is not the recipe for great recorded music, despite all the 20-bit tech talk on the cover. If I were to purchase this one again, I'd look for an earlier, "non"-remastered edition (Amazon seems to carry 5-6 different editions).



Amazon is listing this as a "Galaxy" recording, which has to be a misprint. It's definitely a Riverside recording which, along with Fantasy, is little more than a genre marker used by the Concord Music Group."