1988 · Album
Paris Blues
Recorded Paris, 1987 · Owl (original); Sunnyside Records (US release, 2003)
Two Masters in a Parisian Moment
Evans and Lacy together, unhurried and conversational, making duets that feel like overheard rehearsals.
Paris Blues arrived quietly and stayed that way. Recorded in Paris in 1987, it sat unreleased for over a decade before appearing on the French Owl label, then circulating in the US only in 2003 on Sunnyside Records — a late arrival that guaranteed minimal fanfare. The Penguin Guide to Jazz summed up the prevailing view: "scarcely a momentous occasion, musically speaking, for either man." The assessment stung because it was not entirely wrong. This is not Gil Evans reinventing himself or Steve Lacy at peak invention. It is two seasoned players meeting on neutral ground, trading ideas without urgency or ego.
What makes that acceptable — even worth seeking out — is the setting. Duets strip away the luxury of arrangement and ensemble texture that both men had spent careers mastering. Evans, then in his early eighties, had no orchestra to hide behind; Lacy, with his prickly soprano and uncompromising harmonic sense, had no ensemble to soften his edges. The result is intimate and unglamorous. They negotiate changes slowly, sometimes repeating passages as if working through a problem together. There is no flash, no attempt to prove anything.
This was Evans' final studio recording before his death in 1988. That fact matters less sentimentally than practically — it shows a man still willing to sit down with a younger (but hardly young) partner and see what two horns could build in a room. The Penguin Guide called the results merely light and agreeable. That is fair. It is also not nothing.
Who's playing
Gil Evanspiano
Steve Lacysoprano saxophone
Where next?
More by Gil Evans
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