~~ recommended by fuster ~~
I’ve never approached the Piano like a thing in itself, but as a gateway to Music.
William John Evans
BILL EVANS was born in Plainfield, N.J., on Aug. 16, 1929, to a mother of Ukrainian ancestry and a father of Welsh descent. His father had alcohol-related disorders. His early training was in classical music. He began piano lessons at the age of six and also studied violin and flute. He started playing in a high-school band when he was 12. Later he played a variety of piano jobs as a teenager in a number of Dixieland bands while he studied at the Southeastern Louisiana University. He was recruited by Ralph Pottle, a former band director, to come to Southeastern. Pottle discovered Evans on one of his recruitment tours around the country. Even though Evans is known as a pianist, Pottle actually offered him a scholarship to perform the flute in the Southeastern band. About 1950 Bill formed his first trio with his friends, the recently deceased Connie Atkinson on bass and Frank Robell on drums and played in clubs in New Jersey (The CD Very Early with posthumous released rehearsal tapes). Student by day, performer by night. He graduated with high honors and was the recipient of the university’s “Distinguished Alumnus Award.” Later Bill played in the 5th Army Band from 1950-1952. While there he formed a combo called “The Casuals” that played near the base, on the radio and various other venues. It was guitarist Mundell Lowe who encouraged him to go to New York. In 1955, with 75 dollars in his pocket, he moved to New York where he played with Herbie Fields and Jerry Wald. His early gigs were with Mundell Lowe, Red Mitchell, Tony Scott and Charles Mingus. From an interview with Mundell Lowe (by Ron Nethercutt)
Evans’ first significant record date was the Jazz Workshop album for George Russell in 1956. It included “Concerto For Billy The Kid,” the piece that first brought Bill Evans to the attention of many musicians and listeners. Bill Evans had to go in the army and played flute in the Fifth Army Band. Back in normal life he studied at the Mannes School of Music in New York composition and counterpoint. From 1955 he recorded as a sideman numerous albums. In 1956 he signed with the Riverside label, which featured his first revolutionary piano trio with drummer Paul Motian and bassist Scott LaFaro, whose virtuoso cello-like improvisations highlighted the trio’s unique harmonic and melodic interactions. The Bill Evans trio developed an almost telepathic sense of interplay and a great mutual musical independence. The Bill Evans trios are sometimes interactive, intimate chamber music making that is similar to the greatest classical trios like the Beaux Arts, the Guarneri and the Altenberg trio. From an interview with Miles Davis about Bill Evans
Two years later, he worked with Miles Davis, who shared Evan’s love of the French impressionists Ravel and Debussy, which found their fullest expression on the 1959 modal masterpiece album and best-selling jazz record of all time, Kind Of Blue, which also featured the Bill Evans-Miles Davis evocative and beautiful ballad, “Blue In Green”.
The album opened a whole new world of melodic and harmonic possibilities. Nowadays all the players are jazzicons, all the compositions are jazz classics and the album still sounds sublime. After his collaboration with Miles Davis, resulting in several albums in one year, Evans worked with his own trio, until 1961 when Scott LaFaro was tragically killed in a car crash. Bill Evans was a quiet revolutionary whose Bud Powell, Ravel and Chopin based pianisms introduced a more florid way of playing ballads. Evans was an incredibly lyrical pianist, but he had the ability to be forceful and ambitious as well. Evans’ expressive piano work inspired a whole generation of players who appreciated his unique harmonic approach, his introspective lyricism, and his unhurried improvisation along with an analytical perfection. His chords have its own intrinsic colour, which creates a particular climate. Evans’ essence was defined by his tastful economy of expression. The notes he chose not to play were fully as crucial as the ones he did, “the breath in between the phrase”. The following statement by the famous classical pianist Arthur Schnabel certainly applies to Bill Evans: “The notes I handle are no better than many pianists, but the pauses between the notes, that is where the art resides!” No pianist plays “deeper” in the keys, extracting a richer, more complex piano sound than Bill Evans. Most jazz pianists tend to think “vertically” in terms of chords and are concerned with the rhythmical placement of these chords than with melody and voice leading. His sparse left-hand voicings support his lyrical right-hand lines, with a subtle use of the sustaining pedal. The long melodic line, which, says Bill Evans, is “the basic thing I want in my playing because music must be always singing”.
Through Bill Evans, the piano was freed from rhythmic constraints and allowed to create subtle new ideas of touch and accent. He was a major sideman with Miles Davis in the late ’50s, and his groundbreaking trio with drummer Paul Motian and bassist Scott LaFaro in the early ’60s introduced a freer conception of group improvisation during the famous Village Vanguard Sessions. The original Riverside releases Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby are reissued in 2005 with a three CD box set The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings with a superb sound from the newly remastered original tapes adding previously unissued takes, spoken introductions and the band’s incidental conversations. The musical selections are presented in the chronical sequence of the original five sets, all of the highest historical importance.
Evans’ jazz trios, from the first with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, to his final trio of Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera, included jazz innovators, not merely sidemen. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, Evans would lead some exceptional combos with drummers Larry Bunker, Jack DeJohnette, Eliot Zigmund, Joe LaBarbera, Marty Morrell, and bassists Chuck Israels, Gary Peacock, Eddie Gomez and Marc Johnson. His last officially recorded performance was at San Francisco’s Keystone Korner between August 31 and September 8, 1980, just a week before his death resulting in two eight-CD sets Last Waltz and Consecration.
His very last gig, from 9/9 – 14, which turned to be a two days one, happened at the Fat Tuesdays jazzclub in NYC.
After two days of playing, Evans was much too sick to go on.
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