Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Let down by abysmal production, 30 Jan 2006
By A Customer
This is a potential gem that's let down by cack-handed production. There is so much compression on the recordings that Bill Evans' piano sounds at times like a plastic child's toy, particularly in the upper register. This is a bit of travesty of perhaps the greatest jazz pianist of all time and a personal hero of mine. Bennett is in fine voice but, again, the heavy-handed compression tends to squeeze the sound revealing, at points where the compression "breathes", a cavernous surge of reverb. It's possible that this album is salvageable if all this unnecessary gunk was added at the mixing and/or mastering stage. If this is the case, I'd urge Fantasy (or whoever owns the recording masters) to remix this album. Musicians of this quality don't need any help in terms of sound treatment. It's only piano and voice after all - so mixing is hardly difficult. A little unobtrusive ambient reverb to take the dryness off the sound is all that's required. I live in hope!
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Rare Eloquence, 12 Mar 2003
For all the 'showbiz' gestures in much of his music, Tony Bennett could sing with a subtle jazz feeling and he is one of the very finest interpreters of a ballad lyric. By 1975, the date of this session, Bill Evans had long established a very personal but influential approach to the jazz treatment of ballad material which transmuted its sentimentality into a kind of poetic lyricism, and he was revered for his ability to make the music (and the piano) "sing". So both artists had in common a deep respect for their material and the ability to express it with a rare eloquence, and those qualities make this a highly successful collaboration.
Anyone coming to the album without a familiarity with the pianist's work might be initially disconcerted by the absence of an overblown orchestral support; but what you get instead is a purity of attention to the melody and its lyric from the singer and his accompanist. Bennett inevitably takes most of the 'foreground' attention, interpreting each lyric without histrionic effect but with an intimacy and emotional sincerity rare in this type of music (there are no melodramatic, "My Way"-style 'production numbers' here). Evans accompanies with restraint and sensitivity but without submerging his distinctive musical personality. One of the pleasures of the album lies in following the way his accompaniments 'read' the moods and feelings of the lyrics from phrase to phrase, and his improvised solos develop out of, and lead back into, Bennett's choruses in a natural, integral way.
There are of course some lovely songs here, such as "But Beautiful" and "We'll be Together Again", which have, as they say, stood the test of time, and the Bennett-Evans treatment gives them a new freshness. "The Touch of Your Lips", engagingly sung, also has a piano solo that, in typical Evans fashion, sings as it swings. Evans fans will be interested to see what the duo does with those ballads particularly associated with the pianist. "Young and Foolish" (one of the memorable piano solos on Everybody Digs Bill Evans) captures the nostalgic yearning of the song to perfection. The uninspired lyric of "My Foolish Heart" doesn't add anything to the glowing lyricism of Evans's famous Village Vanguard performance but it's still one of the best tracks. So is "Some Other Time", which has the advantage of a simple but well-crafted lyric which allows the listener's imagination to read between the lines: "Where has the time all gone to?/ Haven't done half the things we want to./ Oh well, we'll catch up/some other time..." On paper it looks like nothing much; set to Leonard Bernstein's melody and sensitively performed by these artists it has something of the depth of a classic love poem (and hear what Bennett does with the sighing fall of an octave on "Oh well"). I could go on to describe the virtues of the other tracks, but part of the pleasure of the album lies in discovering your own favourites. And if you like this album you will probably want to acquire the equally recommendable sequel: 'Together Again'.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Rare Eloquence, 5 Mar 2003
By A Customer
For all the ‘showbiz’ gestures in much of his music, Tony Bennett could sing with a subtle jazz feeling (he recorded an album with the Count Basie Band) and he is one of the very finest interpreters of a ballad lyric. By 1975, the date of this session, Bill Evans had long established a very personal but influential approach to the jazz treatment of ballad material which transmuted its sentimentality into a kind of poetic lyricism, and he was revered for his ability to make the music (and the piano) “sing”. So both artists had in common a deep respect for their material and the ability to express it with a rare eloquence, and those qualities make this a highly successful collaboration.
Anyone coming to the album without a familiarity with the pianist’s work might be initially disconcerted by the absence of an overblown orchestral support; but what you get instead is a purity of attention to the melody and its lyric from the singer and his accompanist. Bennett inevitably takes most of the ‘foreground’ attention, interpreting each lyric without histrionic effect but with an intimacy and emotional sincerity rare in this type of music (there are no melodramatic, “My Way”-style ‘production numbers’ here). Evans accompanies with restraint and sensitivity but without submerging his distinctive musical personality. One of the pleasures of the album lies in following the way his accompaniments ‘read’ the moods and feelings of the lyrics from phrase to phrase, and his improvised solos develop out of, and lead back into, Bennett’s choruses in a natural, integral way.
There are of course some lovely songs here, such as “But Beautiful” and “We’ll be Together Again”, which have, as they say, stood the test of time, and the Bennett-Evans treatment gives them a new freshness. “The Touch of Your Lips”, engagingly sung, also has a piano solo that, in typical Evans fashion, sings as it swings. Evans fans will be interested to see what the duo does with those ballads particularly associated with the pianist. “Young and Foolish” (one of the memorable piano solos on Everybody Digs Bill Evans) captures the nostalgic yearning of the song to perfection. The uninspired lyric of “My Foolish Heart” doesn’t add anything to the glowing lyricism of Evans’s famous Village Vanguard performance but it’s still one of the best tracks. So is “Some Other Time”, which has the advantage of a simple but well-crafted lyric which allows the listener’s imagination to read between the lines: “Where has the time all gone to?/ Haven’t done half the things we want to./ Oh well, we’ll catch up/some other time…” On paper it looks like nothing much; set to Leonard Bernstein’s melody and sensitively performed by these artists it has something of the depth of a classic love poem (and hear what Bennett does with the sighing fall of an octave on “Oh well”). I could go on to describe the virtues of the other tracks, but part of the pleasure of the album lies in discovering your own favourites. And if you like this album you will probably want to acquire the equally recommendable sequel: ‘Together Again’.
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