Since his early death in 1980, the pianist Bill Evans has inspired dozens of tribute albums, from artists as diverse as Michel Petrucciani, John McLaughlin and the Kronos Quartet. This latest homage is inspired by Evans’s duets with the guitarist Jim Hall, with London-based pianist Bruno Heinen playing the Evans role and Danish guitarist Kristian Borring as Hall. For all his nursery-rhyme delicacy, Evans also had a funky bite to his playing, something that Heinen and Borring manage to subtract from this session, instead playing with a clinically smooth, frictionless tone throughout. Show Type Tune and Leonard Bernstein’s Some Other Time are turned into gentle bossa novas; on 34 Skidoo and Five, the piano and guitar play in a counterpoint that sounds like the pair are performing different songs in different studios, only occasionally converging. Sometimes their approach works – on Displacement they identify the pretty heart of a devilishly complicated melody – but, generally, you’re left wanting to revisit Evans’s peerless originals.
