Bill Evans and The Vansband All Stars – The Poetry of Reconciliation: Musicality and the High-Wire Act of Supersonic Improvisation (2024)
Bill Evans & The Vansband All Stars
Portorož / Avditorij Portorož / Slovenia
Saturday, May 18, 2024
Bill Evans is a saxophone legend — and we can say that with absolute certainty today. Over his storied career, the man first made serious waves after joining Miles Davis in the early eighties, and he’s visited Slovenia multiple times since. Most recently, Portorož two years ago. Given how often he keeps coming back, Evans could by now be considered a genuine candidate for Slovenian citizenship. And alongside his trademark musical narratives — built on the juicy acrobatics of unexpected saxophone improvisation — it’s always especially interesting to see who he’ll pull into his backing band for each new tour. Two years ago it was the celebrated Mike Stern on guitar; this time the backing outfit The Vansband All Stars is at least equally stellar, if not more.
We’re talking about John Medeski, one of the finest jazz and cross-genre keyboardists around; Felix Pastorius (of David Byrne fame, among others) on bass — son of the legendary Jaco Pastorius; and drummer Keith Carlock (proverbially a real drumming ‘machine’), whom many will also remember as a member of American art rock icons Toto, and who has also made his name alongside Sting and the ‘Toto associates’ known as Steely Dan.
This visit drew a slightly smaller crowd and wasn’t quite the sellout The Wooten Brothers had been nine days earlier at the same venue. You could still pick up a ticket on the day of the show, though the Avditorij was once again packed to the rafters (God forbid you had a seat somewhere in the middle of, say, the eleventh row and got hit by an urge mid-concert — you’d have been catapulted straight toward the restrooms on the ground floor of the Avditorij).
Anyway, after a lively and witty address by Slovenia’s renowned jazz attaché Branko Rončel — who over the decades has become a great friend of Evans as well — the quartet took their positions. Bill Evans reached primarily for the soprano sax throughout the concert, mixing it with the tenor. Most of the solo escapades were traded back and forth with the incredible John Medeski, who at moments looked like an octopus in a sea of keyboards. Versatility, playful spark, and hair-trigger reflexes are Medeski’s calling cards, and every time Evans tried to fire up the legendary keyboardist with his solo mischief, Medeski delivered. The chemistry between them is downright insane and astonishing. It works flawlessly!
Bill Evans and the band gave considerable attention in the setlist to his latest musical document “Who I Am,” announced for release this year (interestingly, the album was being sold in CD wallet format right after the show in Portorož). Anyway. From the new record he performed (at least — author’s note) the tracks Mica Moon and Spy In The Sky — as far as this writer managed to catch during the concert. Also on the evening’s setlist was the “Modern Standards” track Hearts Of Havana. Felix had to step into Daryl Jones’s shoes, but that didn’t give him any particular trouble — in fact, somewhere early in the second half he paid a magnificent tribute to his father Jaco Pastorius with a long, spellbinding bass passage, after which the quartet moved into a performance of the Weather Report classic Contunuum (written by none other than the late Jaco Pastorius). When the quartet launched into the “Modern Standards” track Hearts Of Havana, it immediately became clear why Evans had gone after none other than the king of electric piano, John Medeski, for this tour. What this extraordinary musician put on display through his playfulness and musical intuition is simply wild.
But here’s the thing — Evans and the band maintain a through-line. No fragmentation, no flights of ‘weirdness.’ The band opens up the middle sections with improvised acrobatics of whatever length, but always finds its way back to the main theme, even if it catches that tightrope balance at the very last moment. Evans–Medeski! Their partnership is the key to all the richness. But that shouldn’t overshadow the incredible rhythm section. As mentioned, Carlock doesn’t know or understand the meaning of the word ‘rest’ (his poor cymbals). The space-filling is lavish and Carlock doesn’t stop for even a beat — he genuinely operates like a ‘machine,’ his ‘tentacles’ constantly in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Hearts Of Havana is the track where the whole quartet really let rip (Carlock included — he gave his upper limbs a thorough workout here too), and if you were looking for one track to hand to someone wanting an immediate sense of what Bill Evans’s artistry is about, Hearts of Havana would be the most fitting compositional achievement of Evans’s to deliver an instant, credible answer. Credible in the context of the artistic expression of the current tour’s quartet.
Breathtaking. Jaw-dropping. Analytical sages call this post be-bop. But it carries many parallels with the chief matador of be-bop popularization — Miles Davis. At every step. That’s undeniable. That’s a fact. It’s a deeply internalized part of the musical visionary spirit of the extraordinary Bill Evans. In the grand finale, Evans and the band also paid tribute to the legacy of the great Miles Davis, taking on the track Jean-Pierre. This is a track Evans loves to revisit, and it’s no surprise it turns up repeatedly on his concert setlists over the years. It comes from Miles’s album “We Want Miles” (this double album came out in 1982, when Evans was of course a solid part of Miles’s musical team).
In the finale, as Evans and the band performed the Davis track, he walked right up to the edge of the stage in an effort to fire up a rather reserved audience that, weighed down by shyness, was struggling to shake it off. Still, a few of them in the crowd did eventually wake up.
What to say at the end? The expected explosive energy of Bill Evans and the backing band rewarded everyone in the room. What’s truly decisive, though, is the chemistry of the backing band tied to the legendary saxophonist. In that respect Evans follows his mentor Miles very closely — Miles too recruited the biggest names in jazz for his backing band. And hand on heart: given that Evans has, through his repeat visits to Slovenia, practically become a local, what’s been most interesting to watch lately is precisely what his team of backing musicians — all star names in contemporary jazz — will get up to next. The concert in Portorož met every expectation. And then some. Evans remains a fierce, sharp, and laser-focused artist on stage. Here’s to the next time, Bill — may it stay that way!
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
