Artist:     The Bill Evans Trio

Album:     On a Monday Evening

Label:     Fantasy Records

Release Date:     3/24/17

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Though jazz itself was flying off into a myriad of highly creative places (fusion, funk, new cool, etc.), Evans (who always fought his inner demons) was in the honeymoon period of his bright and hopeful new musical marriage, and stuck to his determined course to define, deconstruct and redefine his very thesis of the piano trio. So, it is with great pleasure to assure you that as On a Monday Evening handily proves, giants walked among us. Even in Madison, Wisconsin.

Before a sold-out crowd with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Eliot Zigmund, this previously unreleased gig in November ’76 features eight performances sparked and sparkling with a spontaneous, lyrical energy that was, as long time Evans collaborator Gomez admits in the liners, a nightly standard. Evan’s enthralling “Time Remembered,” Cole Porter’s exuberant “All of You,” Snow White’s indelibly dancing “Someday My Prince Will Come,” and an elegantly paced, elegiac reading of Bernstein’s “Some Other Time” are truly vital additions to ever growing Evans archives. That we finally have an almost definitive live recording of this short lived (two year) trio is an added bonus.

—Mike Jurkovic