"Autumn in New York" (Take 2) is the second rendering of Vernon Duke's classic standard on Chet Baker's 1979 album The Touch of Your Lips. Like the first take, it is set at a medium tempo of roughly 113 bpm in F with a 32-bar ABA'C form, but this version reveals subtle differences in approach that illuminate the creative process of improvised music. Doug Raney again opens with a guitar chorus, though his lines take slightly different melodic paths than in Take 1. Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen contributes another eloquent bass chorus, finding fresh ideas within the same harmonic framework. Baker closes with a single trumpet chorus rather than the two of the first take, making this version slightly more compressed and focused. The inclusion of both takes on the album was a deliberate artistic choice, inviting listeners to compare and appreciate how jazz musicians reimagine the same material from one performance to the next. Both versions capture the wistful beauty of Duke's composition, but this take has a slightly more settled, definitive quality that suggests the trio had fully absorbed the song's emotional landscape by this point in the session.
