Bill Evans Claus Ogerman Symbiosis

[Teasing the Korean]

This album has eluded me for some reason but I recently found a cheap CD.  A few initial thoughts:

How refreshing to hear Bill Evans in a setting other than a trio.  Obviously that was his preferred format, but those trio textures really start to sound the same over the course of 50 albums or whatever.  

I suppose this was conceived as a "serious" work, but it is interesting to see how it is influenced by then-contemporary aesthetics.  Many passages feature that introspective minor-9th harmony that I associate with early 70s ennui.  Parts of it could have been on a CTI album. If Ogerman had written something for Evans 15 years earlier and stemming from the same organizing principles, it would have sounded very different.  

The electric piano on track three (third part of the first movement) completely does not work for me.  In addition to the instrument's limitations, it is not well recorded here, and Evans' endless lines of 8th notes almost sounded like they are pasted on.  

The final slow movement (tracks 4 and 5) were for me the most satisfying.

Overall, I like parts of this more than others, but for me, it does not hold together as a satisfying single long work.  

Finally, my copy has a 1960s photo of Evans on the cover.  It ever there was an Evans album that cried out for the beard and leisure suit, this is it. 

[JSngry]

How did you get/how did anybody dare to release this without its original cover?

You should get your money back, like, NOW.

[Teasing the Korean]

Yes, I have no idea what they were thinking when they changed it.  

[king ubu]

guess it's the same edition I have - Motor Music, Germany, second half of the 90s ... as far as I know, that entire series never used original cover art:

[JSngry]

That cover, not good.

[king ubu]

No. But still, the series, in the mid/late 90s, allowed filling a few MPS gaps. They also released some compilations such as one disc dedicated to the Dave Pike Set (I later bought single releases of most of the albums, but I guess the compilation would have actually been quite enough) and a fabulous one compiling some of George Gruntz' great work for the label (alas, he didn't get a whole run of single reissues later on, would have been a worthier choice than some of the stuff the short-lived Universal MPS reissue series brought back in circulation, methinks). Joe Henderson's "Mirror, Mirror", too. And they also compiled the fabulous George Russell Beethoven Hall albums onto one CD, offered the Sun Ra one on two discs (the LP was rather long, almost an hour, I think, the double dsic offers both concerts in their entirety) ... so yeah, bad cover, but some good music to be found there!

[Teasing the Korean]

I just learned that part of the second movement of this was used in the soundtrack of the film "Sideways."  I wonder which passages.