Re: Person I Knew

A meditation disguised as a jazz performance. Evans composed this as a tribute to producer Orrin Keepnews, and the title — an anagram of the dedicatee's name — gives some sense of the affectionate privacy of the gesture. The tempo is slow without being funereal, the voicings lush and pillowy, and Evans's touch on the keys is so soft that individual notes seem to melt at their edges. There is a circularity to the piece that suits its introspective character — phrases that return not quite to where they began, like thoughts that keep arriving at the same unresolved question. It belongs to Evans's later period, when his playing had shed any residual showmanship and become almost entirely concerned with interior states. This is music for solitude that feels inhabited rather than empty — the kind of aloneness that is chosen and comfortable. Put it on when you need to be present inside your own mind without agitation, when the day's noise has receded and what remains is something quieter and more fundamentally yours.