There are concerts, and then there are evenings where the room feels like a living archive – a space where stories, memory and music become inseparable. The Bill Evans celebration with James Pearson and Nikki Iles at the Yamaha Piano Rooms on Wardour Street was entirely in that spirit: intimate, intelligent and full of affection for the pianist who transformed the emotional vocabulary of modern jazz.
From the outset, Pearson set a relaxed, humorous tone, welcoming what he called an “exclusive Ronnie Scott’s audience, here to celebrate 50 years since Evans first played Ronnie’s”. Within minutes he was telling stories of Evans’ first visit to Ronnie’s in 1965, gently weaving history into the atmosphere of the night. Instead of a formal tribute, this felt like a salon: musicians, listeners and anecdotes sharing the same breath.
Two pianists, a shared reverence
Pearson and Iles are a beautiful pairing for Evans’ repertoire. Both are superb improvisers, but what made the duo special was their listening and generosity. Nothing felt competitive or theatrical: each pianist made space for the other, letting lines blossom and recede like two people completing each other’s sentences. It was Evans’ spirit in action — sensitivity before virtuosity.
The Yamaha Bossendorfer concert grand was a star in its own right: articulate and capable of both shimmer and weight. Evans’ music demands touch, voicing and harmonic bloom, and the instrument honoured that requirement perfectly.
Highlights across the evening
Pearson opened with a playful reading of Show-Type Tune,”. The tune unfolded with rhythmic curiosity, and both pianists treated the melody as conversation rather than a vehicle for display. Evans played this tune in ‘65 with the line up of Chuck Israels (Bass) and Paul Motian (Drums) and it was taken from the album Moonbeams.
A luminous performance of Interplay (from Evans’ 1962 album with Jim Hall) became one of the evening’s most energising moments. Iles reminded the audience how unusual it was to hear Evans venture into blues territory and how modern that line still feels today. Their version had lift, colour and unforced swing, the pianists shaping the counterpoint like two dancers in close hold.
Pearson’s personal story of first discovering Kind of Blue the album that brought Evans to prominence and in particular a track called Freddie Freeloader was both funny and revealing — at first told he was listening to Bill Evans, he later learned that Davis had in fact let Wynton Kelly play on this track. Originally booked for the studio session, Davis had negated to tell Kelly that he had replaced him with Evans for the recording of Kind of Blue.
The emotional heart of the evening was “B Minor Waltz,which Iles described as “absolutely heart wrenching.” The performance was spellbinding — poised, transparent and full of quiet ache. In Evans’ writing, happiness and sadness are rarely opposites; they coexist. Pearson and Iles preserved that duality without sentimentality, and the room held its breath through the last bar.
A history lesson worth retelling
One of the delights of the evening was Pearson’s unabridged and unforgettable story about Evans’ first London appearance at Ronnie Scott’s in 1965: a club with a piano missing legs, a milk crate propping it up, frantic dashes around London trying to borrow a Steinway concert grand and how they finally managed to borrow one from an Eaton Square mansion for the opening night, legs removed to squeeze it down the stairs at the old Gerrard Street site. It was a tale of jazz history, logistics and pure determination — told with humour, affection and an eye for period detail. The audience was transfixed.
Hearing this story inside Yamaha’s elegant piano showroom — where pristine grands now arrive by scheduled delivery rather than nocturnal heists through Eaton Square — only heightened the charm.
A radiant version of It Might As Well Be Spring brought a hush to the room and Pearson’s storytelling about those early London visits gave the performance a poignant frame. The upbeat rendition of this wonderful Rogers and Hammerstein composition saw the duo shape the ballad with elegant restraint, letting phrases hover and dissolve naturally.
The Touch of Your Lips was next up and the point remained: Evans’ sound changes how pianists understand beauty, timing and harmonic shape. Their performance of the tune captured that lyricism without imitation.
The pair switched pianos and closed with the modal mystery of “Nardis, a tune officially credited to Miles Davis but widely believed to be Evan’s own. The Hungarian-inflected scale gives the composition its distinctive colour — mysterious, unresolved, almost cinematic. Iles noted that many great musicians have quietly acknowledged Evans as the true author. The duo’s reading had clarity and poise, with one drawing out the modal intensity whilst the other added a quietly burning counterpoint. It was the sort of performance that made the room feel suspended, like time had been reduced to pulse and breath.
After rapturous applause, an encore gave us Dave Brubeck's In Your Own Sweet Way, admired as a jazz standard of lyrical quality and sophistication.
Two artists, one sensibility
What made the whole night remarkable was the emotional clarity with which Pearson and Iles approached Evans’ music. They treated each tune as a short story, not a technical exercise. Their interplay was patient, enquiring and deeply empathetic; it allowed the audience to feel as if Evans was being honoured from the inside out, through musicianship rather than pastiche.
Evans’ music is often described as introspective, but here it felt communal — like letters being opened aloud among friends. The audience responded with long applause, warmth and that rare silence you only hear when a room has surrendered to the music.
Conclusion
This was not just a recital; it was a living portrait of Bill Evans’ art, told by two pianists at the height of their expressive powers and played on an instrument worthy of the repertoire. Pearson and Iles reminded us that Evans’ legacy is emotional, humane and endlessly revealing. The Yamaha Piano Rooms felt more like a 1960s' Greenwich Village salon than a Soho showroom, and Wardour Street felt briefly like New York after midnight.
A quietly unforgettable night. Glenn Wright
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