In Norway: The Konigsberg Concert by Bill Evans
Maybe it was the summer evening. Bill Evans was performing in Norway, a land of long winters with little sunlight. He seemed unusually upbeat. Was he picking up on the bright emotional vibe of his audience in this released-for-the-first-time 1970 concert? The jacket essay by the Wall Street Journal’s Marc Myers describes another possible factor. “Long known for his withdrawn, sullen perch at the piano,” Evans was recently off of heroin. He was animated, offered the audience a smile and “played piano with newfound alacrity.”
Of course, Evans continued to mine the melancholy songbook on selections such as Michel Legrand’s “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” (a new song in 1970 but already on its way to becoming a standard). But he delivered Harold Arlen’s “Come Rain or Come Shine” with jaunty bounce, and his usually maudlin original, “34 Skidoo,” picked up a happy momentum. The sound is spacious, and the ambience hushed as Evans steps back to give bassist Eddie Gomez room for long solos as drummer Marty Morell maintained subtle reverberance. On that evening, the Evans trio took the audience on a journey of many moods, wistful, joyful, questioning.
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