1959 · Album
Great Jazz Standards
Recorded 1959 · World Pacific · Produced by Not specified in available sources
Evans Conducts the Standards with Orchestra
A full orchestra playing standards with Evans leading — big, colorful, and unhurried.
Great Jazz Standards arrives as exactly what its title promises: Gil Evans arranging and conducting a full orchestra through a set of American popular songs, and the sound is spacious and deliberate. This is not a small group snapping through tunes. Strings breathe, brass enters in blocks, Steve Lacy floats his soprano saxophone over the whole thing, and the rhythm section holds steady beneath it all. Evans crowds the page with orchestration — tuba, French horns, multiple saxes and trumpets — but never stacks it into noise. Each voice has room.
Recorded in 1959, this sits comfortably among Evans's large-ensemble work from the period, though it has less of the modernist edge or compositional risk of his best pieces. The standards here — songs like "These Foolish Things" and "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise" — are treated with respect and a little weight, not as vehicles for bebop reimagining. Evans keeps the tempos unhurried and lets the orchestration do the talking. Soloists like Johnny Coles on trumpet and Curtis Fuller on trombone get space to breathe, but this is fundamentally arranged music, not a blowing session.
Allmusic reviewer Scott Yanow gave it four stars and called it "Highly recommended," which fits: this is solid Evans orchestral writing from a seasoned hand. It's not the album to start with if you want to hear Evans push boundaries, but for listeners who already know his sound and want a straightforward, well-crafted large-band treatment of the songbook, it delivers exactly that.
Who's playing
Dick Carterbass
Tommy Potterbass
Gil Evanspiano
Chuck Wayneguitar
Ray Crawfordguitar
Steve Lacysaxophone
Johnny Colestrumpet
Louis R. Muccitrumpet
Allen Smithtrumpet
Danny Stilestrumpet
Bill Eltontrombone
Curtis Fullertrombone
Dick Liebtrombone
Jimmy Clevelandtrombone
Rod Levitttrombone
Denis Charlesdrums
Elvin Jonesdrums
Bill Barbertuba
Al Blockreeds
Robert NorthernFrench horn
Eddie Cainereeds
Earl ChapinFrench horn
Budd Johnsonreeds
Where next?
More by Gil Evans
Svengali 1973
There Comes a Time 1976
The Individualism of Gil Evans 1964
The Gil Evans Orchestra Plays the Music of Jimi Hendrix 1988
The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
