Fast and Loose With Their Foolish Hearts

Bill Evans was the most vividly autobiographical pianist in jazz since Jelly Roll Morton. When he played “My Foolish Heart,” there was never a doubt that he literally meant it — never in a million years was it anybody’s but his own. Lester Young stressed the value of knowing the lyrics to a song as you play the melody, but Evans took that idea a step beyond: Even without knowing the words, you can’t mistake the feeling that goes into each phrase, you know you’re listening to a treatise about hearts and foolishness even if you didn’t even know there was a lyric.Evans influenced more contemporary jazz pianists than anyone outside of a few of his own major inspirations, such as Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. Two prominent players, who have both been described as Evans disciples at different points in their respective careers, are in town this week: the Brazilian-born Eliane Elias, at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, and Brad Mehldau, at Evans’s longtime home base, the Village Vanguard. It’s fascinating to see how each is inspired by different aspects of the Evans legacy.To her credit, Ms. Elias’s new album, “Something for You: Eliane Elias Sings & Plays Bill Evans” (Blue Note), includes a new take on Evans’s 1978 reworking of Cy Coleman’s “I Love My Wife.” Ms. Elias is in a position to celebrate marital fealty since she and her bassist, Marc Johnson, have been married for years. Mr. Johnson served in the Bill Evans Trio for the last three years of the piano legend’s life, and his wife’s current project began when Mr. Johnson unearthed a cassette that Evans had given him shortly before his death. It contained two unfinished songs, which Ms. Elias completed, polished, and added titles to — “Here Is Something for You” and “Evansesque.”Ms. Elias also devised a lyric for the former, which contains many references to other Evans song titles and, in general, captures the overall tone of his music. Still, I prefer to hear her do “Here Is Something” instrumentally, as she did at Dizzy’s on Wednesday. What makes the tune so right for her is its vaguely South American underpinning.Appropriately, Ms. Elias and Mr. Johnson also include “Minha (All Mine),” one of the only bossa novas that Evans ever included in his repertoire.“Five,” contrastingly, is a surprise: It’s an “I Got Rhythm” variant from Evans’s first album, 1956’s “New Conceptions,” a moment when Evans hadn’t yet perfected his signature style. “Five” sounds a lot more like classic Monk than mature Evans, and Ms. Elias and Mr. Johnson, to their credit, make it even more so. In this and the rest of the project, both at Dizzy’s and on the recording, they get a considerable boost from the sheer energy of Joey Baron, a drummer who is as flexible as he is powerful.* * *Meanwhile, down in the Village, the line stretching down Seventh Avenue, all the way past the Psychic Reader and up to the front of Fantasy Lingerie, can only mean one thing: Brad Mehldau is at the Vanguard. Early in his career, Mr. Mehldau was often characterized as an Evans successor, but he rarely plays in such a way as to invite a direct comparison. If I had been hearing him for the first time on Wednesday, I would have been much less likely to notice any resemblance, with the exception of the one ballad on the set, “Baby Plays Around,” an Elvis Costello melody that Mr. Mehldau recast with jazzy chords and a sensitive touch, an overall approach reminiscent of Evans playing Paul Simon.Mr. Mehldau is amazingly popular with listeners his age (37, 10 years younger than Ms. Elias) and younger, who are not generally part of the jazz audience. I can only surmise this is partly because he’s far from a typical neobopper, who buries an audience in an avalanche of notes and chords usually derived from old standards. Mr. Mehldau opened on Wednesday with four originals (one inspired by the guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, another by the movie “Easy Rider”), all of which began with very simple short tunes. Each piece started with the pianist determined to confine his playing to a narrow rhythm and dynamic range, with drummer Jeff Ballard given the freedom to dart all around him.As each piece progressed, the groove widened, and Mr. Mehldau began laying down phrases with increasing expression, and the overall mood became more free-wheeling and openly swinging. Mr. Mehldau also played one classic bop number, Clifford Brown’s “Brownie Speaks,” for contrast, and possibly also to show that he can handle the characteristic, note-heavy, super-fast bebop style.It’s unlikely that Mr. Mehldau will ever do a full-length tribute to Evans, although during the course of his career he has played a couple of the late master’s signatures, such as “Nobody Else But Me” and “Solar,” Miles Davis’s variation on “How High the Moon.” Evans and Mr. Mehldau both recorded it live at the Vanguard, and it’s on Ms. Elias’s album as well.As far as I know, Mr. Mehldau has never played “My Foolish Heart” (although he has done “Young and Foolish”), but it’s the highlight of Ms. Elias’s project. At Dizzy’s, clearly inspired by the knowledge that her husband is playing a bass owned by Scott LaFaro — the bassist in Evans’s first legendary trio — she turned in her most sensitive and moving performance, recapturing Evans’s subtle, exquisite touch and the torrent of emotion that it unleashed. It’s further evidence of how Evans and his spirit continue to venerate the foolishness in all of our hearts.wfriedwald@nysun.com

Fast and Loose With Their Foolish Hearts

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