The Night Beat: National Piano Month

For week two of National Piano Month on the Wednesday Night Beat with your host Doug Crane, we’ll feature “Symbiosis”, a collaboration between pianist Bill Evans and composer Claus Ogerman.

Recorded fifty years ago in February of 1974, it marked the third occasion that Evans and Ogerman had recorded together.  At the time Evans and his manager Helen Keane were searching for a new record label as Columbia had dropped Bill some months earlier.  Its US operation had even failed to pick up its option to release a live album recorded in Japan called “The Tokyo Concert” stateside.  After signing with Fantasy later in 1974 (reuniting Bill with producer Orrin Keepnews who oversaw Bill’s earlier recordings for Riverside) it was finally available in the U.S.

But I digress. With the scant information I can find about the history of “Symbiosis”, it appears it was commissioned by the German label MPS and its founder Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer.  A few years earlier in the summer of 1968, Bill and his trio (with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette) recorded an album for the MPS head at its studio nestled in the Black Forest of Germany that was in no danger of being released at the time as Bill was under contract to Verve.  It wasn’t until 2016 that those recordings were finally made available by Resonance Records.

And I digress again.  Perhaps the private recordings from 1968 provided the impetus for “Symbiosis” to come to fruition.  But when first issued by MPS in late 1974 it was duly ignored.  Even today it’s one of Bill Evans’ least known recordings. We’re going to do our best to change that this evening.

“Symbiosis” was recorded in New York City at Columbia Recording Studios, the very same studio where fifteen years earlier (1959) Bill had been the pianist on Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”, in 1958 for Michel Legrand’s “Legrand Jazz” and in 1971 for Bill’s Grammy-winning album “The Bill Evans Album.” (Bill’s final studio album “We Will Meet Again” was recorded at the Columbia studio in 1979).

For “Symbiosis” Ogerman features the Bill Evans Trio (with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Marty Morell) in the company of some of the best (and busiest) studio musicians of the day as well as jazz luminaries such as Phil Woods and Hubert Laws. The composition itself is divided into two movements with many tempo changes. Sometimes the trio is featured by itself and on other occasions there are extended woodwind passages that engage in lengthy call-and-response exchanges. What pins “Symbiosis” together is how well and seamlessly Bill Evans is able to shift between the written text of the score and the parts that rely upon his improvisation. It took the special skill and musicianship of Bill Evans to make this collaboration work.

Of the three Evans/Ogerman joint efforts, “Symbiosis” is, by far, the best and most successful. “The VIPs” from 1963 is a largely forgettable affair with short takes on popular movie themes of the day. “Bill Evans Trio with Symphony Orchestra” from 1966 is pleasant enough but is somewhat undone by engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s preferred microphone setup for pianos.

At the time of Bill’s passing (the 44th anniversary is this September 15th), plans were underway for a Bill Evans/Michel Legrand project. As some of Bill’s own later compositions were taking on a bit of a Legrand flair, we’re left to speculate as to what the results might have been.

For Claus Ogerman, some of the busiest years of his life were yet to come. After working with Connie Francis, Sammy Davis, Jr., Stan Getz, and Frank Sinatra in the 1960s, he found much success working with producer Tommy LiPuma and artists such as George Benson, Michael Franks, and Diana Krall.

Listen to The Night Beat with host Doug Crane for week two of National Piano Month on Wednesday, September 11 at 8 p.m.

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