1968 · Album
At the Montreux Jazz Festival
Recorded 1968, live at the Montreux Jazz Festival · Verve
Three Players Caught Live in Montreux
The trio swings hard and loose, with Evans sounding more playful and adventurous than his earlier work.
Put on this set and the first thing you hear is a room. The Montreux crowd is close, the piano is bright, and the trio moves with an easy, forward momentum that feels less like a studio session and more like a band finding its footing in front of people. Bill Evans, Eddie Gomez on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums play with a looseness that suits the concert setting.
The mood is lively rather than brooding. Evans experiments with harmonic dissonance and sharp rhythmic contrasts, and DeJohnette pushes the time with real propulsion. AllMusic reviewer Rovi Staff described it as Evans's most extroverted playing since his debut, New Jazz Conceptions, and that fits what you hear: more play, more risk, less of the introspection of his earlier trio records.
For placement, this is a good live entry point into Evans's later trio work, especially if you find his studio ballads a little too quiet. It won the 1969 Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group, which tells you the trio was widely heard as something special that year. It is not his most famous record, but it is one of the more energetic documents of this lineup.
Who's playing
Where next?
More by Bill Evans
Portrait in Jazz 1960
Everybody Digs Bill Evans 1959
You Must Believe in Spring 1981
New Jazz Conceptions 1957
The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
