Although Gary McFarland played the vibes, he was a very original and distinctive arranger who originally turned heads with his arrangement of ‘Weep’ for the Gerry Mulligan Concert Band and whose album highlights include The October Suite recorded for Impulse! featuring Steve Kuhn on piano, All the Sad Young Men for Anita O'Day on Verve, orchestral jazz albums for Stan Getz and Bob Brookmeyer and the subject of this very welcome reissue, The Gary McFarland Orchestrawith Bill Evans and the jazz version of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, his first two albums under his own name for Verve. McFarland's arranging avoided bombast, the obvious and cliché, preferring to contrast light and shade in passages that often took flight and assumed a life of their own. His collaboration with Bill Evans on The Gary McFarland Orchestra with Bill Evans was his one and only outing with the pianist, who, other than on George Russell's arrangement of ‘All About Rosie’, seldom seemed so at home in a pre-arranged context. On an album of McFarland originals, each written to frame Evans' remarkable playing, the album takes on a feeling of an informal suite with ‘Reflections in the Park’, the opening track, providing the leitmotif for the album. With two violas and two cellos, in what is essentially a small group, the writing is both lyrical and deft framing Evans to perfection. The jazz version of How to Succeed in Business follows on from the huge sales Andre Previn scored with his jazz version of My Fair Lady on the Contemporary label, leading to a series of jazz versions of various Broadway shows by Previn and many in the jazz community. This was actually McFarland's first album for Verve under his own name, and is with an impressive big band, and here, McFarland's use of woodwinds (a trademark touch) provides a light, airy feel in a series of arrangements that transform Broadway fodder into convincing vehicles for jazz improvisation, featuring soloists such as Clark Terry, Al Cohn and Bob Brookmeyer whom he had previously encountered in Gerry Mulligan's Concert Orchestra.