30. Bill Evans – Sunday at the Village Vanguard

Who knows? Maybe I’ll start liking jazz after all. I’m sure there’s got to be a good fifty or so albums ahead of me so I might as well make the effort, right? As albums go, this has its charms. Bill Evans, who played alongside the likes of Charles Mingus and Miles Davis (and was a big part of ‘Kind of Blue’) here stretches his pianist muscles on a range of tracks. The opener, “Gloria’s Step” is intricate and upbeat, before it descends into a moody melancholy with “Man’s Gone”. For me though, “Alice in Wonderland” is the one that really jumps out. There’s the lingering feeling that what you’re listening to is an old familiar tune, while it draws you deeper and deeper in with its imaginative layered sound.

As an album it sits comfortably in your iTunes library, not a game changer but certainly worthy of the 42 minutes it keeps your attention.