Live at Art D’Lugoff’s Top of the Gate – Bill Evans

Piano International (Nov, 2012)
When Live at Top of the Gate was recorded in October 1968, drummer Marty Morell had just joined Bill Evans’s trio – bassist Eddie Gomez had been with him since 1966. One of many posthumous releases since the pianist’s death in 1980, it crystallises the controversy over his later career. ‘Bill was particularly energetic that night, and there was a lot of exploration and excitement,’ Morell reported. But one not untypical bulletin-board comment is that he ‘rushes the tempo [and] stays so on top of the beat as to reduce his swing quotient to that of a mechanical type- writer’. Evans found it hard to create a relaxed, swinging uptempo, …