There's a huge amount of good music here, as indeed there should be from a compilation covering a quarter-century. A previous retrospective, the 3-CD set of out-of-European-copyright material up to 1962 (The Quiet Passion of Bill Evans, reviewed in Jazzwise 223) included some hard-to-find Evans recordings done as a sideman. But this Craft set concentrates on him as a leader – or co-leader, in the case of items with Adderley, Getz and Manne. It's lucky that the majority of Evans's output belongs in the same catalogue stable (i.e. Riverside, Milestone and Fantasy) and, while repertoire leased from Verve, Blue Note and the Warner group helps fill out the picture, the lack of anything from his Columbia years is not a huge loss.

The internal layout of the box has a nearly chronological account of the Evans trio line-ups filling its first two CDs. Thus, you go from his dynamic, almost Silver-like debut on ‘Five’ to the amazing bursts of energy and technique in Evans's last year. In between, we get no fewer than eight tracks with Scott LaFaro, including four from his last Village Vanguard date plus that great ‘Autumn Leaves’ and Bill's own version of his co– composition ‘Blue In Green’ (interesting to recall that piece's doubling of the tempo was already used on the ballad ‘Young And Foolish, also here). There are five trios with Eddie Gomez, four of them live, with a variety of drummers such as Philly Joe and Jack DeJohnette.

The next two CDs focus respectively on the pianist's solo playing (such as the famous ‘Peace Piece’) and his various small-group recordings, from the duo with Jim Hall (the up-tempo ‘My Funny Valentine’) to a final quintet with Tom Harrell, via an interesting meeting with fellow post-cool graduates Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh. The ‘solo’ disc includes a track each from the three overdubbed Conversations albums, with the only brief appearance of an electric keyboard, but the standout is the weird and mournful ‘NYC's No Lark’ (one piano fractionally out-of-tune with the others) – like the reverse side of the ‘Peace Piece’ coin. An over-long and unfocussed ‘Danny Boy’ may give ammunition to those who find Evans too introspective or too ‘classical, but even this CD is mostly in-tempo.

The last disc is a new live discovery, well recorded by local radio in Vancouver and also available separately as On A Friday Evening (as shown above). Its only downside is the rather 1970s bass-amp sound, but there's a good piano, well exploited in the lengthy unaccompanied intro to ‘Nardis, one of only three duplications of repertoire and very different to the spectacular, even lengthier solo on a 1979 version included in the box. Of course, with any such compilation, the individual punter can dispute the choice of titles or versions. But the main lesson to be learned is that, even for experienced listeners, a well-known album track heard in isolation and surrounded by other relevant material is often a stunning reminder of how extraordinary this music is.