Bill Evans at Town Hall is a live album from 1966 by Americanjazz pianist Bill Evans and his trio. It was released as "Volume 1," but no subsequent volume appeared. A planned release of big-band material, featuring Evans, from the second part of the concert ended up being nixed, as according to Evans's manager, Helen Keane, the pianist "did not play his best" during the second half.[1]
Writing for AllMusic, music critic Scott Yanow called the album "a superior effort by Bill Evans and his trio in early 1966. ... [T]his live set features the group mostly performing lyrical and thoughtful standards. ... However the most memorable piece is the 13½-minute 'Solo - In Memory of His Father,' an extensive unaccompanied exploration by Evans that partly uses a theme that became 'Turn Out the Stars.'"[2] The lengthy solo also features a newly composed "Prologue," somewhat reminiscent of Satie and Debussy, an elaborated version of "Re: Person I Knew," now titled "Storyline," and a closing "Epilogue" drawn from the 1958 album Everybody Digs Bill Evans.[5] Evans's biographer Peter Pettinger notes that "'Turn Out the Stars' was to endure and to become arguably Evans's second-greatest classic after 'Waltz for Debby.'"[6]