Bill Evans / Jim Hall - Undercurrent flac album

Undercurrent is a 1962 album by jazz pianist Bill Evans and jazz guitarist Jim Hall. The duo collaborated again in 1966 on the album Intermodulation. The front cover image for Undercurrent is Toni Frissell's photograph "Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida". The album was originally released on United Artists, then reissued by Solid State in 1968. More recently, the album was reissued on EMI/Blue Note (in fact, both Blue Note and United Artists Records have been owned for a long time by EMI)

If Undercurrent, the first and superior of two piano, guitar collaborations by Bill Evans and Jim Hall, (the other being Intermodulation produced four years later), were a book and not a record, then the blurbs on the back of the dust jacket might read: "Lush. touching" "Filled with almost fugitive nuance and effortless interaction" "Perfection in spiritual and technical communication". Together, throughout the album, Evans and Hall sound like so much more than just a piano and guitar. Here we have minimalism stood on its head. To this day, I don't think that any other piece of music provides to me, the sense of Mozartian perfection and completeness that this recording does.

Engineer – Bill Schwartau. Photography By – Toni Frissell. Photography By – Charles Stewart. Producer – Alan Douglas. Typography – The Composing Room, Inc.

Other than four piano solos from April 4, 1962, this set was pianist Bill Evans' first recordings after a hiatus caused by bassist Scott LaFaro's tragic death in a car accident. The first of two meetings on record in a duo format with guitarist Jim Hall, the collaborations are often exquisite. Both Evans and Hall had introspective and harmonically advanced styles along with roots in hard-swinging bebop. There is more variety than expected on the fine set with some cookers, ballads, waltzes, and even some hints at classical music.