Everybody Digs Bill Evans (Again!)

New Audiophile Reissues Burnish a Proud Legacy.

- Robert Baird

For fans, of course, he’s never been gone, not even for a minute. A jazz pianist who played from the heart and spent a tumultuous life fighting his demons while searching, as singer Tony Bennett has often said, “for truth and beauty,” Bill Evans is now the subject of four previously unheard, recently released titles, on LPs, CDs, and downloads, of live recordings of his music. There’s also, from Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, a new and superlative One-Step Process vinyl reissue of his classic Sunday at the Village Vanguard. Finally, there’s a wonderful new documentary, Bill Evans: Time Remembered, a labor of love by a fan and titled for one of Evans’s best-loved tunes. And, unlikely as it sounds, the demand for Evans’s music is still strong enough to inspire a controversy over rights and clearances, 37 years after his death, in 1980, at the age of 51.

Directed by Bruce Spiegel, CBS news editor, Emmy Award–winning producer, and devoted Evans fan, Bill Evans: Time Remembered was released on DVD on January 15, 2017. The film’s bedrock are the many interviews, conducted over eight years, with such players as Jack DeJohnette, Gary Peacock, and the late Jim Hall and Paul Motian, all of whom played and recorded with Evans. There are also reminiscences from friends such as lyricist Gene Lees, and Evans’s family— including his niece Debby Evans, for whom he wrote “Waltz for Debby.” Also included are a number of clips of Evans playing in concert, and segments of audio-only interviews with him.