Affinity (Bill Evans album)

Affinity is an album by American jazz pianist Bill Evans released in 1979, featuring Belgian harmonica player Toots Thielemans. Evans plays a Rhodes piano on some of the tracks, and saxophonist and flutist Larry Schneider appears on some of them as well. The album represents the recording debut of bassist Marc Johnson, and drummer Eliot Zigmund, who had left the trio the previous year, puts in a guest appearance as a studio musician.

Evans said of Thielemans, "He is the only harmonica player in jazz. And I just love his whole feeling for music and melody. How he does it on a harmonica, nobody will ever know. I have stopped trying to figure it out." Thielemans had worked with singer-songwriter Paul Simon and introduced his ballad "I Do It for Your Love" (from the album Still Crazy After All These Years) to Evans, who reharmonized it, recorded it here as the opening track, and made it a prominent part of his repertoire during the last two years of his life. Affinity also features a new version of "Blue in Green" from Kind of Blue, although it is mislabeled as "Blue And Green" on the back cover.

In addition, the album includes the Henry Mancini song "Days of Wine and Roses," which Evans had previously recorded with Tony Bennett; "The Other Side of Midnight" (aka "Noelle's Theme") by Michel Legrand, whose works appear on many of the pianist's albums from this period; and Evans's only recording as a leader of the widely covered jazz classic "Body and Soul."