Jade Visions

The story behind

Bill Evans recorded Jade Visions in a single day, but that day forever changed how jazz is heard. It was June 25, 1961, at the Village Vanguard in New York City, and the Bill Evans Trio —with Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums— played five back-to-back sets, each half an hour long, unaware it would be the last time the three would perform together. Eleven days later, LaFaro died in a car accident, and what was initially meant to be just another Riverside Records album became a historic document. The record label only expected a recording of that session, but fate had other plans: the material left out of the main album turned out to be so special that years later it was released as Jade Visions, a 3:45 track that captures that fleeting magic.