Waltz For Debby (Original Jazz Classics Remasters 2010)

Album review

Inseparable from Sunday at the Village Vanguard, recorded on June 25, 1961 in the same legendary New York club, the live Waltz for Debby captures the expansive growth of the metaphysical understanding between Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. However, the real highlight of the impressionist trio was the chemistry between Evans and LaFaro. “It was not just a musical experience,” the pianist would later say. “Scott was one of the most lively people I’ve ever known. He has always been a source of inspiration to me. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t died. He had progressed so amazingly fast.” That early summer Sunday in 1961, on the old Steinway in the Vanguard, Bill Evans unfurled a set filled with emotion without ever being tearful. Rarely before had that powerful element of his piano DNA been on such emphatic display. This subtle music has a stunning romanticism that never gives way to simple skill or facility. It is immortalized in My Foolish Heart, the Victor Young and Ned Washington standard that opens the album, interpreted without maudlin emotion by the three musicians. The elegance of the trio would be cut short just 10 days after the concert with the death of Scott LaFaro on U.S. Highway 20 in New York state between Geneva and Canandaigua… © Marc Zisman/Qobuz