Bill Evans - Inner Spirit

April 2022 release

2 CD set

Inner Spirit represents one of the first trio recordings by Evans’ last great band, with bassist Johnson and drummer LaBarbera, both veterans of Woody Herman’s band. Their work behind the pianist featured in a series of remarkable, intense live recordings captured before the master pianist’s death in September 1980. It also proved to be his final appearance in the country.

Once again, Evans and his band stepped into a society suffused with uncertainty, as a 1976 military coup had toppled the regime of Isabel Perón, who had taken power after her husband’s death in 1974. Myers writes, “By 1979, Argentina also was three years into its notorious ‘Dirty War,’ when right-wing death squads murdered thousands of political dissidents and suspected Peronists. Buenos Aires had become a city of shadows, fear and unease.”

LaBarbera told writer Myers, “It was a bad time down there, politically. There was tension with the military presence in Buenos Aires, but people on the streets and the musicians we met were still joyous and excited to hear Bill.”

The musicians responded with an ecstatic and engaged performance typical of their brief time together. Again, Evans brought a Latin touch to his concert repertoire, with the addition of “Minha,” a composition by Brazilian composer Francis Hime he had recorded four years earlier. He also played such recent additions to his set as “Letter to Evan,” a new piece played solo and dedicated to his son, and “Theme From M*A*S*H.” The rarified climax of the concert came in Miles Davis’ “Nardis”; the great showpiece of the pianist’s last gigs, it stretched to a length of 17 minutes in Buenos Aires, sporting a nearly eight-minute solo introduction and inspired solos by all the group’s members.

LaBarbera says of his collaboration with the band’s bassist, who was then 25, “Marc Johnson and I hooked up immediately. His time was right where I loved it; it was from the first beat. For me, it was seamless. And every time we played, it was instantaneous. It’s like we never left each other. It’s that good. It’s that immediate.”

Johnson says of the concert, “The trio had arrived at a pretty good place. We were definitely on a rise performance-wise. The plateau we hit was pretty high; pretty dependable and reliable. The music was getting to a really fun place. By then, in 1979, I was definitely playing with a little more authority and conviction. Joe sounds amazing on it, as usual, just phenomenal really. He helped keep that trio going and swinging, and kept it all together. I’m really gratified by the level of the performances and even the recorded sound and the selection of material.”

In How My Heart Sings, Evans’ biographer Peter Pettinger writes, “At the end of this concert Bill yelled to his colleagues, ‘Beautiful!’ as well he might.” And as the listener might, as well.