A review on What’s New by Don DeMichael (Rating: 3 1/2 stars)
There is a fetchingly unpretentious air about these performances, but given the sometimes muddled results, one wonders if a soloist, even of Steig’s great talent, can be meaningfully grafted onto such a gem-like entity as the Evans trio. True, every-one solos well within the context of the instrumentation and literature, but the accompaniment for Steig sometimes gets out of hand and reaches up and over the flutist to such a point that it is difficult to tell just who is soloing. This unfortunate phenomenon is especially disconcerting on the title tune and Spartacus: Evans seems to unable to resist accompanying Steig with single lines played in the same octave in which Steig is playing. This also seems to affect the flutist, who plays with more cohesion and fire when Evans lays out or confines himself to chord punctuations, as on So What?
When the musicians aren’t fighting each other, however, they play some fine music.
Evans is in excellent form, soloing vigorously with that clear sense of development that makes his music such a joy to behold. Of exceptional quality are his improvisations on Straight (sic) (including an unaccompanied two choruses of single-note construction that leap like grasshoppers at the listener) Leaves (sic), So What?, and his marvelously musical introduction to What’s New? Steig is best on Straight, Lover Man (in which he overcomes Evans’ accompaniment), and So What? When he’s right, his work displays an irresistible passion and lyricism. He could cut down on the sound effects, though…