Bill Evans Trio, Explorations

By Paul Casey

Explorations was Bill Evans‘ second album with his most famous trio. It was recorded in one day, on February 2, 1961, in between recording Know What I Mean? with Cannonball Adderley. Explorations was a follow-up to the seminal Portrait in Jazz, Evans’ vision of a three piece that spoke as if with one voice. This was also the last studio recording to feature Scott LaFaro as bassist, as he died tragically in a car crash in the summer of ’61. He was 25.

The impact of the LaFaro/Paul Motian/Evans Trio is measurable, but only with a very long ruler. While Portrait in Jazz is arguably the more significant step towards all players having equal importance and being true collaborators, Explorations has a mood that is seductive. “Haunted Heart,” the second track, would have been an equally appropriate title. “Elsa,” also recorded during the Know What I Mean? sessions, appears again here, and manages to move in different ways, sadder without Cannonball, showing beauty from the other side of the mirror.

If there is a commonality between the Jazz albums which have really moved me, it is their ability to express feelings to the listener in an almost instinctual manner. That music performed at this level requires such acumen and artistic skill, makes its nature as both dream thought and buried memories all the more startling. Explorations is one long feel. How the Bill Evans Trio manage to express the pain of waiting for an answer that may never come, to a question that removed your heart and called into question its ownership, is not quite clear. Yet they do, on “I Wish I Knew.”

Even during that one day of recording, Evans was thinking of ways to better already accomplished performances. This reissue contains four outtakes from the session, including two which were not available on the previous CD version.

These include “The Boy Next Door,” which was intended for the album in 1961, but dropped due to time constraints, as well as alternate takes of “How Deep Is the Ocean,” “I Wish I Knew,” and “Beautiful Love.” “Beautiful Love,” as it appears on the album proper, was the second take, displaying the universal mind of Bill Evans, sharp and attuned to what could yet be achieved.

Explorations is an album to return to, and shows The Bill Evans Trio as a significant musical force in Jazz. Bill Evans was a seeker, and this is an album of what he has found. And when he finds some of what he was after, and some of what he wasn’t expecting, we are the wiser for it. These are the recordings of a restless musical mind.

The reissue of Explorations was released on June 14 by Concord Music Group under the Original Jazz Classics series.