Jazz
Bonsaï Music · 24 April 2026
The title puts Evans next to landscape, and that’s the record: a piano and guitar duo moving through eleven pieces in fifty-one minutes with Bill Evans in the background. Enrico Pieranunzi is one of his foremost interpreters and he quotes him sparingly here: only three of the eleven tunes come from that repertoire, and one of those three, “Once Upon A Summertime”, is Michel Legrand’s — what Evans did with it was record it. The other two are his own, “Song For Helen” and “Very Early”. The rest of the album is written in-house.
Bebo Ferra is the guitarist who has made the other half of the conversation his. Sardinian by birth and Milanese by adoption, he comes out of Paolo Fresu’s quartet, and the way he accompanies Pieranunzi is conversational: neither of them acts as the other’s foundation for many bars at a stretch. “Siren’s Lounge” is the longest track at six minutes thirty-six, the label put out “Il Giardino Di Anne” in February and “Song For Helen” in April, and Diego Imbert’s double bass turns up on two pieces only, “Song For Helen” and “Calling Enrico”.
Those two are also the only change of texture in the whole set. Eleven pieces for duo, all between three and six and a half minutes, all in the same confidential register and all governed by the singable melody: the record holds up from end to end and runs short of contrast past the halfway mark. It was recorded in Meudon, outside Paris, in May 2025, and comes out as Bonsaï Music BON260401.
Rating: 7.5/10
Text by Aina Torrents