Sunday at the Village Vanguard

A bassist can change a piano trio without simply taking more solos. On Sunday at the Village Vanguard, Scott LaFaro alters the available space around Bill Evans, while Paul Motian helps make their changes of direction belong to the same performance. The interesting question is less who leads the group than what the other two musicians do when that leadership moves.

These six performances were selected from five sets recorded in New York on June 25, 1961, and released that year. Orrin Keepnews produced the recording, with Dave Jones engineering. LaFaro also supplies the compositions at both ends of the programme: Gloria’s Step opens it and Jade Visions closes it. His importance therefore enters the album through its repertoire and sequence as well as its instrumental exchanges.

Accompaniment as an active choice

During the opening piece, the bass solo and the relatively sparse piano support offer a useful example of shared responsibility. Evans need not reproduce the density of his own foreground playing beneath LaFaro. Leaving a harmonic outline can enable another kind of movement. The trio’s interaction is not a rule that each musician must occupy an equal number of seconds; a change in accompaniment can matter as much as a new solo.

Room inside familiar songs

Solar approaches nine minutes in this edition, and both Alice in Wonderland and All of You exceed eight. The programme gives these pieces substantial space rather than treating recognizable melodies as brief calling cards. Its middle stretches invite comparison between the songs’ identities and the changing relationships inside each performance. Calling Solar the fastest track would reduce that variety to a contest the album does not require.

A deliberately smaller ending

Jade Visions lasts about three minutes and forty-four seconds, sharply contracting the scale after All of You. This is an album sequence, not a transcript of the day’s running order. The later Waltz for Debby draws another selection from the same engagement; even the two original albums together do not contain all five sets. Hearing this record as a shaped selection preserves its distinct ending without mistaking it for the complete event.