The Original Album Series, as many readers will be aware, is a budget-priced box-set series, with each CD housed in a simple cardboard cover. The Bill Evans collection contains five of the albums he recorded for Warner Brothers at the tail-end of his life, between 1977 and 1979, and three of them were released posthumously.

In many respects, it was a period of transition for Evans. His long association with the Puerto Rican bass player Eddie Gomez came to an end in 1978, paving the way for his last great trio, with Marc Johnson on bass and Joe LaBarbera on drums. But it was also a traumatic time for the pianist, whose brother committed suicide in early 1979. Johnson later noted that that this event had a profound impact on Evans, with only the music keeping him upright in the months that followed.

The collection begins with New Conversations (***), which was recorded in early 1978, and saw Evans use overdubbing to accompany himself - just as had had on Conversations With Myself and Further Conversations With Myself on Verve in 1963 and 1967, respectively. On this occasion, he used electric piano as well as acoustic, which leaves the album sounding somewhat dated. The music still has its moments, of course, with the Evans composition Remembering The Rain one of the album's highlights, but most listeners will find themselves going back to the Verve originals, which sounded more inspired.

Affinity  (***) was recorded in late 1978, and was co-credited to Belgian harmonica player Toots Thielemans. This album marked the first appearance of Marc Johnson on bass, and the final appearance of drummer Eliot Zigmund, who had played with Bill Evans since 1975. Larry Schneider also appears on the album, playing tenor and soprano saxophone, and flute. It sounds an unlikely combination, but the duo with Thielemans works surprisingly well. There is an aching sadness to the harmonica on Paul Simon's I Do It For Your Love, for example, and this tune became a regular feature in the pianist's subsequent live recordings. If Thielemans and Evans were on the same wavelength, the same cannot be said of Larry Schneider, whose contributions sound quite heavy-handed by comparison. The album is also marred by the inclusion of Tomato Kiss, one of his own compositions, which sounds quite out of place.

You Must Believe In Spring (****) is the third album in this collection, and was released in 1981, after Bill Evans had passed away. The album was recorded in 1977, however, and pre-dates New Conversations. There are no great revelations here, but this has always been one of my favourite albums with the Gomez trio. Evans was starting to include some new material, including the moving tribute to his brother, We Will Meet Again (For Harry), who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and Theme from M*A*S*H (Suicide Is Painless), which again became a regular feature of his set in the years that followed. The album is beautifully recorded, courtesy of Tommy LiPuma, who had also produced George Benson's crossover album, Breezin', just one year earlier. The only disappointment is that this collection does not include the three bonus tracks that were made available when the stand-alone CD was reissued recently, which included a rare version of Evans playing Freddie Freeloader.

Last, but not least, the collection includes The Paris Concert, Edition One (****) and Edition Two (****). After Zigmund's departure, 'Philly' Joe Jones filled in briefly on drums, before Joe LaBarbera came on board. The concert was recorded in November 1979, by which time the new-look trio had been together for several months. It has been well-documented that Johnson and LaBarbera reinvigorated his playing, even amid the turmoil of his personal life, and it's good to hear tunes like I Do It For Your Love evolve, and older tunes such as Re: The Person I Knew treated to a new lease of life. The sound quality is less than optimal, with Johnson's bass sounding muffled and too low in the mix, but these are still valuable documents of the last great trio in action. Better still was to come, with Turn Out The Stars/The Final Village Vanguard Recordings from June 1980, but that is outside the scope of this set.

For some reason, Warner Brothers have excluded one album from the Original Album Series. We Will Meet Again was Evans's final studio album, and recorded in the light of his brother's death. It was an unusual album, to the extent that it featured two horn players - which was not a format that the pianist favoured. It did, however, win two Grammy awards, so it seems strange to exclude it from the collection.

But this is a minor complaint. It's hard to go wrong with five Bill Evans albums for the price of a single CD. It may have been a period of transition, but there is plenty of fine music to enjoy here. If you already own the Riverside recordings - and you should - this is a great way to explore the pianist's later years.