Search - Bill Evans Trio: In Europe on DVD

Good video, not so good value.

Michael J Edelman | Huntington Woods, MI USA | 04/24/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"There's 50 minutes of video on the disk, and of that 50, only 35 are of the Evans trio in Europe. The rest consists of a later solo recording of Evans, Evans at Newport with Eddie Gomez, and Evans participating in a four-hands jam with John Lewis, Marian McPartland and Patrice Rushan.

So you don't get a lot of the early trio for your money, but then, there isn't all that much Bill Evans video out there. What you do get is a marvelous selection of the Eveans/Israels/Bunker trio that produced some of Evans' best recorded work in the 1960s after LaFaro's untimely death. The recordings all appear to be transfers from black and white European TV recordings, and the quality is about what you'd expect frmo the era, but the camera work is very good, and follows the soloists.

Still, it would have been nice if the producer of this DVD had given us a bit more Evans instead of splitting what little there is between three or four expensive disks."

Valuable, yet fuzzy footage

Kurt Juergens | 08/07/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"After purchasing the Oslo Concerts DVD and watching it over and over, I was looking for more of Bill Evans on video. Watching this one made me appreciate the Oslo Concerts DVD a lot more, because on this both the picture and sound suffer from fuzziness. You can get the Oslo Concerts DVD cheaper (I believe) and it's a lot better (see Bill Evans Trio: The Oslo Concerts). But even the trio performance for the BBC program Jazz 625 has been rereleased ("The 1965 London Concerts") in much more enjoyable quality. Of the four Bill Evans DVDs I have bought, this is the only one I decided to sell (and I made that decision quickly)."