Bill Evans - Smile With Your Heart: The Best of Bill Evans on Resonance Records (2019) [Hi-Res]

Resonance Records, the leading archival jazz specialists, continues their recently inaugurated series of samplers, the Takao Fujioka Collection, on June 21 with a pair of packages devoted to material from their bestselling, award-winning and previously unreleased recordings by pianist Bill Evans and guitarist Wes Montgomery.

Smile With Your Heart: The Best of Bill Evans on Resonance brings together standout tracks from the company’s four sets of hitherto unheard material by the lyrical keyboard master: Live at Art D’Lugoff’s Top of the Gate (2012); Some Other Time: The Lost Session from the Black Forest (2016); Another Time: The Hilversum Concert (2017); and Evans in England (2019). Evans in England was issued for the first time as limited edition two-LP set on Record Store Day 2019, and 3 tracks from the album appear on Smile With Your Heart.

The Los Angeles label’s collections of rare, unheard music by Evans and Montgomery have garnered international acclaim. Evans’ Some Other Time, a stunning Dutch radio date featuring a short-lived trio with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette, was named one of the year’s top historical releases by DownBeat, JazzTimes, the U.K.’s Jazzwise, and the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll and topped Billboard’s Jazz Albums chart.

All of Resonance’s albums devoted to Evans and Montgomery have been released with the full cooperation of the musicians’ estates. Zev Feldman, Resonance co-president and producer, says, “It’s been an honor to work so closely with Evan and Robert of the Evans and Montgomery estates over the course of the last 9 years to bring these incredible, unearthed treasures to light. These artists are really in the bedrock of our label, and it’s been remarkable to see the kind of excitement our releases generate in the press and with our fans.”

In his liner notes to Smile With Your Heart, Bill Evans’ son Evan Evans writes, “The lovely work that Zev Feldman, George Klabin and everyone at Resonance Records have done in finding these treasure troves of beauty from my father’s legacy is beyond words…Resonance has accomplished something very admirable with this release; they’ve created a compilation album with its own soul and authenticity. It’s as tender and divine as it is brilliant and swinging.”

Like Resonance’s first two compilations in the Takao Fujioka Collection – Sing a Song of Jazz: The Best of Vocal Jazz on Resonance and Jazz Piano Panorama: The Best of Piano Jazz on Resonance, released in May – the newly released Evans and Montgomery samplers features the eye-catching artwork and design of Fujioka, editor of the Japanese jazz journal Way Out West; he supplied the cover art for Resonance’s 2016 Stan Getz release Moments in Time.

Tracklist:
01 - Bill Evans - Someday My Prince Will Come (Live) (5:14)
02 - Bill Evans - Yesterdays (Live) (5:07)
03 - Bill Evans - Mother of Earl (Live) (4:22)
04 - Bill Evans - You're Gonna Hear from Me (3:32)
05 - Bill Evans - Baubles, Bangles and Beads (4:52)
06 - Bill Evans - My Funny Valentine (6:58)
07 - Bill Evans - Nardis (Live) (8:34)
08 - Bill Evans - Very Early (Live) (5:14)
09 - Bill Evans - Turn out the Stars (Live) (4:54)
10 - Bill Evans - Polka Dots and Moonbeams (Live) (3:53)
11 - Bill Evans - RE: Person I Know (Live) (8:50)
12 - Bill Evans - Waltz for Debby (Live) (7:57)