Alice in Wonderland

Evans takes the Disney source material and transforms it into something unexpectedly sophisticated, even mysterious. The waltz rhythm he adopts gives the piece a floating, carousel quality, but the harmonic language he drapes over it — rich with substitutions and unexpected voice leading — ensures that the whimsy never tips into cuteness. LaFaro's bass on the Riverside recording is particularly remarkable here: conversational, rhythmically independent, almost argumentative in the best sense, pulling the texture away from conventional accompaniment into genuine three-way dialogue. There is a sense of genuine wonder in this recording, not the manufactured wonder of commercial music but the prickling-at-the-back-of-the-neck feeling of encountering something that doesn't follow the rules you thought applied. It suits moments of creative restlessness, when the mind wants to follow an unexpected path without knowing where it leads. For anyone who has ever felt that the real world is somehow less vivid than the world inside a good dream, this is a kind of homecoming.