Recording of the Month

Ryan Truesdell: Shades of Sound: Gil Evans Project Live at Jazz Standard Vol.2
Truesdell, conductor; 23-piece orchestra
Outside in Music 2014/2025 (reviewed as CD). 2025. Truesdell, Dave Rivello, prods.; James Farber, Tyler McDiarmid, Geoff Countryman, engs.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½

Ryan Truesdell launched his Gil Evans Project in 2012 with Centennial. It contained 10 Evans arrangements, including two original Evans compositions, that had never been recorded. The project was made possible by the fact that Truesdell had been granted access to the Evans family archives. Evans was a towering figure who had been responsible for some of the greatest recordings in the history of jazz, like his own Out of the Cool and Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain. Evans died in 1988, and Centennial was something the jazz world never expected to have again: a brand-new Gil Evans record. Truesdell assembled a large orchestra containing many of the best jazz musicians in New York and used an eminent engineer, James Farber.

After Centennial, every May, Truesdell began playing annual week-long gigs at the Jazz Standard in Manhattan. In 2015, he released Lines of Color, recorded live in the Jazz Standard in May of 2014, with more unearthed Evans charts. Truesdell kept most of the players from Centennial. He also kept Farber. These first two albums by the Gil Evans Project were among the most critically acclaimed recordings of the second decade of the 21st century. They earned a Grammy award and four nominations.

Now there is a third. Shades of Sound comes from the same week in the Jazz Standard as Lines of Color. The first track, "Spoonful," was composed as a one-chord blues by Willie Dixon and first recorded by Howlin' Wolf, in 1960. Later it was covered by British rock band Cream. The tune might seem an improbable choice for Gil Evans, but at the Jazz Standard it became a blues-drenched tour de force. As it erotically throbs, it sounds like the orchestra, hunkered down, in no hurry, might play it all night. Then tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin cuts loose. His long, monstrous solo never quite loses touch with the three-note hook that Willie Dixon left the world. Mat Jodrell's trumpet solo stays deep in the groove. Pianist Frank Kimbrough takes over briefly, incited by riffs from the band. Then alto saxophonist Dave Pietro almost matches McCaslin's intensity, no mean trick.

Much of Truesdell's work with the Gil Evans Project has involved previously unrecorded and even unknown material. But three of the tracks here, "Spoonful," "The Barbara Song," and "The Ballad of the Sad Young Men," had appeared on Evans albums of the '50s and '60s. Truesdell's new versions use Evans's original arrangements, but the solos, which are defining, are of course completely different. Evans's 1964 interpretation of "The Barbara Song" contained a famous Wayne Shorter tenor saxophone solo. McCaslin does not even reference Shorter's rapt, mysterious reverie; he does his own solo and spills his guts. It is almost as wild as the one on "Spoonful." In 1959, "The Ballad of the Sad Young Men" included a profound, soul-baring solo by trombonist Jimmy Cleveland. In 2014, Ryan Keberle extends the song's trombone heritage with his own freshly poignant statement. Another star of this track is Kimbrough. His improvised prologue is somehow both emotionally naked and elegant. Kimbrough, a universally respected pianist, died suddenly in 2020. Truesdell says he was a "pioneering voice of the Gil Evans Project" and dedicates this album to his memory.

These three epic performances take up more than half the album. Of the remaining five tunes, four are heard here for the first time. The most valuable is "Neetie's Blues," which Truesdell found among Evans's manuscripts. It is almost as greasy and funky as the album's other blues, "Spoonful." That an artist as refined as Evans could get so down-and-dirty is downright exhilarating. The other tracks are short historical curiosities from further back in time. Three feature the band's excellent, under-recognized vocalist, Wendy Gilles.

Truesdell's three albums with the Gil Evans Project provide a special opportunity to study an age-old dichotomy: studio vs live recordings. By any objective standard, the masterpiece of the series, the most perfect, is Centennial, impeccably recorded at Avatar Studios in New York. But for those of us who love live recordings, Lines of Color and now Shades of Sound will matter more. They are looser and a little rougher, but they speak truth. They get the night air. They get the crowd and the electricity in the room—a great jazz room that no longer exists. (The Jazz Standard closed in 2020.) They are in fact a time machine that gets us as close as we can come to the impossible: They take us through space and time to relive a precious moment gone forever.—Thomas Conrad