Season 5 episode 3 A Letter to Bill Evans

All That's Jazz

For their seventh outing together as a close-knit, collaborative rhythm tandem, bassist Leon Lee Dorsey and drummer Mike Clark tapped pianist Michael Wolff as third man in their ongoing trio adventures. Wolff, who had previously appeared with Dorsey and Clark on 2020’s Play Sgt. Pepper, completes the triumvirate on this heartfelt tribute to the late, great pianist-composer in the new album titled “A Letter to Bill Evans.”

These renderings of Bill Evans classics contain the kind of sparkling energy and improvisational freshness that always animates these trio sessions between Dorsey, Clark and their third partner. And this time around they hit on the perfect choice with pianist Michael Wolff, who first heard Evans live at Davies Hall in San Francisco when he was 18, and got the only available tickets which were actually on the stage, where he got to experience the concert close up.

“A few years later, when I was 20,” Wolff explained, “I went on the road with Cal Tjader . I ran into Bill Evans a lot in various cities where we all were playing; I befriended him and, of course, hounded him for information about his music. He was very open and understanding with me. And whenever he was performing in the Bay Area, I would go hear him every night.”

Wolff’s connection with Mike Clark, who is celebrating his 50th anniversary as a member of The Headhunters, goes back to the late ‘60s on the Bay Area jazz scene when Wolff was house pianist with Bishop Norman Williams’ Sunday afternoon jam at a great SF club called the Both/And. “I was 17 years old and still in high school, I wasn’t old enough to get into most clubs then. But I had this gig and Mike came by one Sunday to sit in. And that was the beginning of a long working relationship.”

While the music of “A Letter to Bill Evans” captures the spirit of the great pianist, Wolff/Clark/Dorsey take some liberties with this classic Evans material, interpreting it through their collective musical lens. In my conversation with all three musicians, we talk about how the album came together, their concept for each track, and how it’s truly their “love letter” to the music and the man who is one of the giants of jazz.