Bill Evans The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 (3-CD Set)

This is it. The breakthrough. The pinnacle of spontaneous musical communication. Three men breathing as one on a tiny bandstand. Everything Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro, and Paul Motian had been working on for the previous 18 months led to this moment. The intimate, contrapuntal dialogues between Evans's poetic piano and LaFaro's bass, as swift as the wind. There is a fresh discovery here: take one of LaFaro's "Gloria's Step," an ever-so-slightly flawed beauty. There's the clear-eyed annotation of Orrin Keepnews, producer of all of Evans's Riverside albums. And finally, there is the crowning glory of these performances, the last ever by this singular trio.