Bill Evans’ trio with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette didn’t last long—only a few months in 1968—which makes any recording by that group valuable. Now Resonance Records is adding to our knowledge of the period by releasing a tape from DeJohnette’s archives that captures the trio live during a four-week engagement at Ronnie Scott’s in London in July ’68. Titled simply Live at Ronnie Scott’s, the album will be released as a special limited-edition double-LP set for Record Store Day Black Friday on November 27; CD and digital editions will follow on December 4.
JazzTimes is honored to premiere a mini-documentary on the story behind this previously unreleased recording, featuring interviews with DeJohnette (in conversation with pal Chick Corea), Gomez, British jazz critic Brian Priestley (who was in attendance at one of the ’68 shows), Evans’ friend Chevy Chase, and Resonance’s Zev Feldman. All participants in the video also contributed to the album’s liner notes.
Live at Ronnie Scott’s is the fifth album of previously unheard Evans recordings to be issued by Resonance; two of them, 2016’s Some Other Time and 2018’s Another Time, also feature the trio with Gomez and DeJohnette. During its actual lifetime, the trio only made one official album, the Grammy-winning Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival, recorded on June 15, 1968.
