This selection of material recorded at Ronnie's may well be the best posthumous Evans discovered by Resonance, but I can imagine it not seeming so to everyone. Those listeners in love with the pianist's more dreamy side may be put off, not only by the energy on display but by the very up-front sound quality of many tracks – achieved, we are told, through an illicit mike placed on stage (!) which Bill subsequently came to condone, and that magnifies the immediacy of communication between the pianist and his accomplices. Some tunes even seem on the point of speeding up, which may perhaps reflect Evans's state of health at the time, but adds to the impression of urgency. As well as his interplay with the piano, Gomez has a lot of solo space whereas Morell is featured at length on ‘So What’, which Bill had begun reviving in the previous year. Incidentally, the versions of Evans originals ‘Sugar Plum’ and ‘Two Lonely People’ (which might have been written back in 1966) pre-date their first studio recordings on The Bill Evans Album by nearly 18 months, which is a further point of interest in an absorbing archive issue.