Sunday at the Village Vanguard Bill Evans Trio

Along with bassist wunderkind Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, Evans perfected his democratic vision of trio cooperation, where all members performed with perfect empathy and telepathy. Pure and thoughtful musicality permeates these performances. Evans, LaFaro, and Motian slide over and under one another in a sumptuously alchemic solution, resulting in a single homogenous musical thought expressed in one voice from three distinctive philosophies.

All About Jazz

This trio is still widely regarded as his finest, largely because of the symbiotic interplay between its members. This is a great place to begin with Evans. One need listen no further than the elegant and haunting, graceful modal reading of “My Man’s Gone Now” from Porgy & Bess to know that there is something completely balanced and indescribably beautiful in their approach. Motian’s brushes whisper along the ride cymbals and both Evans and LaFaro enter into a dialogue that emerges from a darkly hued minor mode, into the melody and somehow beyond it, into a form of seamless dialogic improvisation

Thom Jurek, AllMusic