1993 · Album
Time Remembered: John McLaughlin Plays Bill Evans
Recorded March 1993 · Verve · Chart Performance: Number 10, Billboard Top Jazz Albums
A Respectful Distance from Bill Evans
McLaughlin honors Evans with fluid playing, though the session sometimes lacks the push it needs.
When John McLaughlin sat down to record Time Remembered (1993), he was paying tribute to Bill Evans, the pianist whose harmonic sophistication shaped how guitarists think about chord voicing and melodic nuance. McLaughlin's approach here is reverent—he plays with care and attention, his soloing fluid and purposeful. The sound is full and clean, the kind of recording where you can hear exactly what each player is doing. But reverence can be a double-edged thing. AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow gave the album only two stars and noted that "more mood and tempo variations would have kept this from being such a sleepy and overly respectful session." That's a fair read. The performances are competent and sometimes moving, but there's a reluctance to push, to argue with Evans's legacy, to make something dangerous out of it.
Walter Kolosky, reviewing for All About Jazz, saw it differently, calling it "a beautiful and fully realized tribute" with "strong and forthright" playing throughout. Kolosky found McLaughlin's soloing occasionally dense but never misdirected. There's a genuine split in how people heard this one—some felt the weight of the dedication, others found it respectful but cautious. The album reached number 10 on the Billboard jazz chart, so it found an audience, though it's not the kind of record that people build their collections around.
By 1993, McLaughlin was already deep into his career, and this feels like something he wanted to do rather than something he needed to do. It's solid work, competently played, with moments that land well. But it's also the sound of a musician in thoughtful mode rather than exploratory mode. If you're interested in McLaughlin's work with standards or in hearing how he approaches another master's harmonic language, it's worth hearing. Otherwise, his other recordings probably offer more discovery.
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