Something For You: Elaine Elias plays Bill Evans

I’m such a hardcore Bill Evans place, I convinced myself I shouldn’t leave my New Jersey home simply because my town is next to Bill Evans’s birthplace.

I was charmed when I discovered that Elaine Elias had recorded an album as a homage to Bill Evans. Personally I can’t think of anyone who is in a better position to play Evans than Elias. She has jazz chops, and like Evans, she has classical training and has recorded a classical album (“On the Classical Side”), much like Bill Evans’s “Trio with Symphony” and his J.S. Bach noodling in the “Practice Tapes.” Of course, I also love Brazilian music: Gilberto, Jobim, and de Moraes.

Yes, Elias’s voice leans towards nasal when she sings in English on this album, surprisingly absent in the melancholy “Minha,” for me the gem of the album. Whatever you think of her voice, she more than makes up for it in sincerity. I think the music speaks for itself, and though the words help (Elias writes lyrics to Evans “Here is Something For You”), there is so much honesty in her performance, it’s almost unnecessary.

I think it’s unfair to try to compare Elias’s performance with Evans. She definitely makes the Evans standards hers, not succumbing to mere imitation of his shimmering style. By this I mean a sense of restrained elegance, and a light feminine touch. She still has impressive chops: just listen to My Foolish Heart or Here Comes That Rainy Day. It’s just that it has expertly controlled dynamics where Evans’s sometimes leap out at you. For the longest time, I was fond of saying that listening to early Bill Evans was like walking through a beaded glass curtain. Late Bill Evans was watching drops of water released into the middle of a quiet lake. Elias performance is early Bill Evans seen through the gauze of late Bill Evans.

Marc Johnson (bassist for late Bill Evans) and Joey Barron, both in Elias’s provide ample support with the right touch of sadness so crucial to any story about the heartbreaking life of Bill Evans. The solos are short, enabling a roster of 17 tracks, including a closing one that “morphs” from an original Bill Evans cassette – found by Marc Johnson and played to Elias – to the current recording by Elias. There is also pieces from Evans’s New Conversations (which Evans overdubbed with multiple pianos) that Elias reduced to miniatures for one piano. The motif of a particular riff from Waltz for Debby arises throughout the tracks, pulling it all together.

In the liner notes, there is mention of a bonus track for the Japanese release of this recording, containing RE: PERSON I KNEW, which just made me cry and run to my stuff animals for copious hugs.