(Riverside)

One of the most lyrical pianists in jazz annals, Evans hit career stride with this intimate set recorded at the famed New York club. The performance revels in the sublime chemistry between Evans, bass marvel Scott LaFaro and sensitive drummer Paul Motian. Vanguard is gorgeously melodic, but more introspective and probing than most piano-trio music that preceded it. In many ways, this disc is the gold standard for the piano-trio format. In '05, Riverside released a three-CD set, The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961, that captures the Evans trio's entire three-day run. All of it is transcendent.

This article appears in Jun 6-12, 2007.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...