Cd - final sessions, elmo hope

Getting Sentimental CD, Mestone Records20031 sc UPC: 025218933629 Native New Yorker Mike Harris is neither a professional musician nor a behind the scenes employee of the music industry; he has earned his living as an optical physicist. But he's someone who Bl Evans' hardcore fans should adore. Harris, himself a truly devoted fan, taped numerous Evans appearances at Manhattan's Vlage Vanguard in the '60s and '70s and asked owner Max Gordon for permission when he first started taping. Originally, Harris dn't mean for any of the recorngs to be released commercially; they were strictly for his private collection. But Harris eventually realized that his gold mine needed to be shared with other Evans devotees, and in 1996 (after he went through the proper legal channels), many of those recorngs found their way to Mestone/Fantasy's eight-CD, 104-track box set The Secret Sessions. As generous as that release was, Harris stl had an abundance of unreleased Evans performances in his Vanguard collection -- and in 2003, some more of them became commercially avaable on the single-CD Getting Sentimental. Whe The Secret Sessions spans 1966-1975, this 73-minute sc focuses on one night: January 15, 1978, when Evans was joined by bassist Michael Moore (not to be confused with the liberal fmmaker/political activist or the American reedman who has made waves on the Amsterdam-based creative music scene) and drummer Phly Joe Jones. The sound quality is decent -- not fantastic, but decent -- and Evans' acoustic pianism is consistently solid on famiar material that ranges from "Emy" and "But Beautiful" to his own "Turn Out the Stars." Jones is a definite asset, and even though Moore doesn't enjoy as strong a rapport with Evans as Ede Gomez and Scott LaFaro had enjoyed, he plays reasonably well. Getting Sentimental isn't essential and isn't recommended to casual listeners; nonetheless, Evans' more obsessive fans wl welcome this enjoyable, if imperfect, release with open arms. ~ Alex Henderson, Rovi Hide CONTIONI MINT CD E' COME NUOVO