[c] –Steven A. Cerra, Introduction, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
In the early 1960s, not too long after it first opened, pianist Bill Evans was a frequent visit to drummer Shelly Manne’s - The Manne Hole.
After the tragic death of his close musical colleague, bassist Scott LaFaro, in July, 1961, Bill couldn’t bring himself to sit at the piano.
He just stopped playing, some say, for almost a year.
Shelly, who was one of the most sensitive guys on the planet and who was also a great fan of Bill’s music, thought perhaps a change of venue would be good for Bill and brought him out to “The Coast,” as it was then referred to by the cognoscenti, for a solo piano stint at his Hollywood, CA club.
At the time, Bill Evans was not as well-known to the wider Jazz public as he would become later in his career. As a result, the audience for his last set at Shelly’s was often a musicians-only affair.
Due to reasons of proximity, preference and pleasure, Shelly’s was my hangout as a young, aspiring Jazz musician.
And thanks to Shelly’s generosity in allowing us in the back door sans cover charge, it was a place that I and my cohorts could visit often to fill-up on Coca Cola and plenty of great Jazz.
Bill occasionally joined us at our table, shared information about how he constructed or “voiced” chords, which was very unique at the time, and graciously answered what seems in retrospect to have been an unending stream of questions about “what he heard in the music.”
He was kind and considerate to me and my mates and always very open to requests to play certain tunes.
For some reason, I had become very taken with Tadd Dameron’s, If You Could See Me Now. When I asked him if he would play it, I remembered that he got a very distant look on his face and said: “ I don’t play it much anymore, but if you’ll stick around, I’ll close the last set with it.”
A few years later, Bill was again appearing at Shelly’s, this time with a trio which included Chuck Israels on bass and Larry Bunker on drums, who was my mentor and friend.
When he played, Bill always hunched over the piano, kept his head down and was seemingly oblivious to anyone else in the room.
I had quietly entered the club and was seated so that I could observe Larry’s drumming [no instructional videos in those days, only personal observation].
After the tune they were playing when I walked in had concluded, Bill started in on If You Could See Me Now.
While later talking with Larry as he was putting his cymbals away for the evening, I mentioned the tune and Larry said that in the year-and-a-half that he had been with Bill, this was the first time that Bill had played If You Could See Me Now while he had been with the trio!
Imagine my pleasure then when my copy of Bill’s “The Sesjun Radio Shows” double CD arrived and I found If You Could See Me Now as the opening track on the second disc.
Bill’s treatment of what has since become a Jazz standard is magnificent as are all the tracks on this 2 CD set which will become available for purchase on June 28, 2011.
When “Bill Evans [who] is considered by many to be the most influential Jazz pianist of the last 50 years,” has more of his music released, it is always welcomed news.
According to Michael Bloom Media Relations: “These sessions, recorded live for the highly acclaimed Dutch Radio Show “Tros Sesjun” between 1973 and 1979, showcase Evans’ talent in a small group setting as he appears with such eminent musicians as Eddie Gomez [bassist], Eliot Zigmund [drummer], Marc Johnson [bassist], Joe LaBarbera [drummer] and Toots Thielemans [harmonica player]”
There are nineteen [19] tracks on the two CDs. All of the music is played to Bill’s exacting standards and the recording quality throughout is warm sounding and very distinct.
With high profile artists such as Bill, there is sometimes a tendency for anything and everything which is discovered posthumously by their estates to be issued irrespective of its artistic merit or sound quality.
This is definitely not the case with Bill Evans: The Sesjun Radio Shows [Out of the Blue. PRCD 2011005].
I think that Bill would have been very proud to have these performances released as commercial recordings.
The folks at T2 Entertainment, the original producers of these shows, Dick de Winter and Cees Schrama [who also selected and sequenced the music], and Arjan de Rues for his superb editing and mastering deserve a great deal of credit for making this music available.
Special mention should also be made of the work of Machgiel Bakker and Job De Hass of Beeld & Geluid. Based in The Netherlands, Beeld and Geluid is a public facility with sound and vision links to media archives.
In the 1970s, Bill began to feature his original compositions more often during his concerts and club dates and this is no less the case on these recordings on which he performs Laurie, The Two Lonely People, Sugar Plum, Time Remembered and two sterling renditions of his difficult TTT (Twelve Tone Tune and Twelve Tone Tune Two).”
With regard to the latter, the conventional scale is made up of eight tones, but 20th century composer Arnold Schoenberg created music in which no pitch class (or note) is repeated until all other chromatic pitches have been used. Any group of twelve pitches arranged this way is sometimes called a “row.”
It is difficult to compose music using a twelve tone row, let alone to improvise on it without it sounding like some sort of an exercise and a tortuous one at that.
Bill’s artistry is such that he turns the twelve tone row into a musical chase or game of tag between himself and bassist Eddie Gomez that’s easy and fun to follow.
You can always tell when Bill is in the presence of a powerful ballad – one whose melody tugs at his soul. He doesn’t improvise much off of these, preferring to play around it.
This especially the case with tunes like The Days of Wine and Roses, Some Other Time and If You Could See Me Now.
He may add a note here and there; change the tempo; play the theme in chords; add some transitional riffs to elongate the melody. But he remains focused on the melody itself.
Ballads that Bill has composed - Time Remembered, The Two Lonely People and Sugar Plum - find him more adventurous; more willing to take chances; more inclined to explore the inner possibilities of a tune’s structure.
A melodic ballad in the hands of Bill Evans becomes a pianistic treasure to behold. It’s as though these melodies, the piano and Bill Evans were created to be together.
One suspects that the Jazz “gods” may have created the symbiotic relationship in Bill’s balladic pianism for their own pleasure.
Mercifully, the production team of Bill Evans: The Sesjun Radio Shows has opted to share more of Bill’s introspective and impressionistic treatment of beautiful melodies with the rest of us mere mortals.
Another characteristic of Bill’s Jazz artistry is the strong interplay between the piano and the string bass and these interchanges continue to be on display on Bill Evans: The Sesjun Radio Shows with the work of bassist Eddie Gomez on Disc 1 and bassist Marc Johnson on Disc 2.
Both Eddie and Marc play bass with a high level of virtuosity, one that will literally find you holding your breath at times. Their command of the string bass is so great that they are able to take an instrument that is often overlooked and make it compelling to listen to.
Followers of Bill’s trio music have come to expect his concerts to include versions of My Romance and Miles Davis’ Nardis that primarily serve as vehicles for him to showcase the talents of all the members of the trio with special opportunities for the drummer to “stretch out” [play extended solos].
Bill Evans: The Sesjun Radio Shows has treatments of both of these signature tunes and each contains generous amounts of Joe LaBabera’s tasteful and musical drumming.
Recorded on three, separate occasions in 1973, 1975 and 1979, the varied program, sparkling sound quality and masterly musicianship of Bill Evans: The Sesjun Radio Shows would make an excellent introduction to Bill’s music, if it is new to you, and put a smile on the faces of those who are already familiar with it. More Bill Evans is like an extra helping of dessert.
Here's a video on Bill Evans: The Sesjun Radio Shows which features Bill’s performance of – what else? – Tadd Dameron’s If You Could See Me Now.
As Curator, and now, Curator Emeritus of American Music at The Smithsonian Institute, John Edward Hasse has done so much for Jazz over the years, as has the vocalist par excellence Tony Bennett, that the editorial at JazzProfiles thought we’d bring them both along to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the birth of pianist Bill Evans on these pages.
The lyrical jazz pianist, born 90 years ago this month, blurred the line between front man and accompanist in his intimate connections with other musicians.
By John Edward Hasse — Mr. Hasse is curator emeritus of American music at the Smithsonian. Aug. 10, 2019 Wall Street Journal.
“Eyes shut, shoulders hunched forward, face parallel to the piano keyboard, Bill Evans focused on his bassist and drummer, ignoring the chatter of rude drinkers at the Top of the Gate nightclub in Greenwich Village. Had he lived, Evans would have turned 90 this week.
A college-age pianist at the time, I was thrilled to experience his music washing over me. Revering him as my keyboard hero, I cautiously approached him during a break. He listened quietly to my compliments and posed patiently for a photo. Soft-spoken and introverted, he wore his genius like a hidden pocket.
Evans was born in Plainfield, N.J., on August 16, 1929. Attracted to the piano at an early age, he pursued late-night gigs during his high school years. At Southeastern Louisiana University, he excelled at classical piano.
Evans pioneered a sound like no other. Steeped in formal music studies, adept at sight-reading, and blessed with a keen ear and an analytical mind, he brought a sophisticated sense of harmony to his playing, with rich chord voicings and original chord progressions. Changing a note or two within a chord, what musicians call “inner voicings,” Evans masterfully heightened interest by creating counterpoint — two or more melodic lines moving independently. As a pianist and composer, for example on “Waltz for Debby,” written for his niece, he pioneered his own harmonic idiom, so much so that books have been written solely about his harmony.
The emotional sensitivity of Evans’s playing prompted critic Martin Williams to call it “private and emotionally naked.” If it appeared that Evans’s fingers were lovingly caressing the keys, his connection went beyond that: he and the instrument became one. Like a great concert artist, he perfected his tone, pedaling, dynamics and keyboard touch, from feathery to driving. He was a pianist’s pianist, serious, virtuosic but not flashy, never one to act the entertainer. Unlike his predecessor Bud Powell, Evans produced a lovely tone from the piano, and unlike his contemporary Oscar Peterson, whose prodigious technique and fast runs were dazzling, Evans often shone in slow ballads.
His playing set such a standard that dozens upon dozens of his recordings, more than those of just about any other keyboard artist, have been transcribed for musicians to study and play. So inventive are his improvisations that classical pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Igor Levit have recorded some of these scores, as if Evans were an American Chopin.
Miles Davis, a discerning talent scout, brought Evans into his acclaimed sextet to help conceive and make the 1959 album “Kind of Blue,” which became a best-selling masterwork.
As Davis would do with his band, Evans made his trio more interactive by bringing each player toward the forefront. Evans took one of the core ensembles of American music — the jazz trio, his specialty — to new levels of three-way exchange. He became one of the most influential musicians of his generation.
Evans made more than 50 albums under his name. Asked to name two that should not be missed, I would single out the posthumous compilations “The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961” and “The Complete Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Recordings.”
In the former, featuring 13 different tunes captured on a day in June 1961, Evans and his trio — adventurous bassist Scott LaFaro and subtle drummer Paul Motian — created a timeless classic. To listen closely is to enter the singular time-space of a dark, smoky night club for an unforgettable performance. You hear soft murmurs from the audience, low-key applause and a sound-scene of intense feeling and telepathic interplay. In such tunes as “My Man’s Gone Now,” “My Foolish Heart” and “Milestones,” you feel you’re eavesdropping on an intimate dialogue among three brilliant musical minds.
When Tony Bennett recorded with Bill Evans in 1975 and 1976, they played not as singer and accompanist, but as co-equals. Matched in mastery of their idioms, the result was one of the best productions either made — Bennett unadorned and deeply felt, Evans at his lyrical best. “I felt like I was recording with a symphony,” said Bennett. “It was really the best involvement I ever had with a musician.” Highlights include the poignant “Some Other Time,” the exquisitely tender “A Child Is Born” and the effusive “Make Someone Happy.”
For decades, Evans struggled off and on with drugs. He died in 1980, at age 51.
Like most jazz musicians, most of his improvisations — spontaneous compositions — instantly floated away, never to be heard again. But fortunately for listeners, his legacy lives on, not only in hundreds of recordings and concert videos, but also in the fingers of countless pianists — and in his inspiration of other musicians. “The greatest music lesson I ever got,” said Tony Bennett, “The most powerful thing he taught me was to search only for truth and beauty.”
—Mr. Hasse is curator emeritus of American music at the Smithsonian.
“... beauty still affects people, … they know they are custodians of it. We still need to believe in the beautiful. ...all of us are more loyal to the idea of beauty than we mean to be or know we are.”
- Liz Lev, art historian and author as told to Peggy Noonan, WSJ [paraphrased]
“One of Evans's favorite tour stops in Europe was Ronnie Scott's, the London jazz club launched and managed by two British saxophonists—Ronnie Scott and Pete King. According to drummer Marty Morell, a member of the Bill Evans Trio from 1968 to 1974. Evans loved the club's impeccably tuned piano and the city's old-school jazz fans ….”
- Marc Myers, insert notes to Bill Evans: Evans in England
“In March 1965, [Ronnie Scott’s] club was able to announce proudly the arrival of the first all-American group to play on its premises. Bill Evans was indeed something to be proud of. He was that rare breed: a jazz performer with a strongly European bias toward reflection rather than explicit emotion who could still convey all of the orthodox jazz virtues of swing, profound understanding of the blues and a strong sense of spontaneity….
It was the perfectionist quality of Evans's approach and the subtlety of his thinking that made Ronnie Scott and Pete King realise that they would have to improve the facilities a little. The club's piano was a battered old upright that had been in use there since the establishment opened, its eccentricities by now instinctively grasped by Tracey [house pianist Stan Tracey], who knew every treacherous habit it had. But they could not expect Evans to play on it. So the two club proprietors performed the long-postponed ritual of selling the piano the weekend before Evans was due to arrive. They then set about hiring a grand piano. …
Eventually a friend and sympathiser with the club's objectives, the jazz pianist and composer Alan Clare, was able to arrange the loan of a grand piano for Evans's opening show. It came at the eleventh hour.
When Evans began to play … he had distinct mannerisms in performance, [and] Evans seemed to express his apparent desire to escape more and more comprehensively into a fascinating landscape inside his own head. A thin intense-looking figure, he sat at the instrument with his head bowed over it, his nose at times virtually touching the keyboard, hands floating ethereally through a mixture of evaporating arpeggios, crisp, sinewy single-line figures that would erupt and vanish in an instant, and an ever-present rhythmic urgency that continually prodded at the otherwise speculative and otherworldly quality of his work.
Unlike many of the bebop pianists, Evans did not merely concentrate on chorus after chorus of melodic variations on the harmony - the latter usually expressed in bald, percussive chords designed to emphasise the beat -but sought to develop a solo as a complete entity with a fundamental logic and shape, his left hand developing and enriching the harmony. … Bill Evans - as the New York Village Voice writer Gary Giddins remarked - exhibited the white jazz players' gift of 'swinging with melancholy'. Evans became another regular visitor to Ronnie Scott's Club over the years, with a variety of high-class and empathetic accompanists.”
- John Fordham, Jazz Man The Amazing Story of Ronnie Scott and His Club
“For many decades the transatlantic traffic of jazz musicians suffered at the hands of politicians. Not until 1965, after a history of restrictions and exchange agreements, was the gate fully opened for ail-American hands to play in Britain. In March of that year the Bill Evans Trio became the first such group to play at Ronnie Scott's jazz club, and for the pianist's British followers it was a momentous visit. ...
The critics for Melody Maker had just voted Evans into first place in their jazz piano poll. Such critical reaction was based on his recordings, but there is nothing like hearing the real thing. Today it is easy to forget the impact of this new voice whenever he went to a new place. The pianist John Horler recalls his first experience of the Evans sound; ‘I remember being at the bar at Ronnie Scott's with my back to the bandstand when I heard these chords being played very quietly on the piano. The impact was as great as if you'd suddenly heard the Count Basie band in full cry! I turned around, and Bill Evans was sitting at the piano ready to start his first set."
- Peter Pettinger, Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings
With the exception of Pops, Duke, and Miles and Coltrane, more words have been written about Bill Evans than any other Jazz musician of the 20th century.
But while the narratives about Armstrong, Ellington, Davis and ‘Trane are mostly celebratory, that is to say, works of praise and respect regarding their achievements, the writings about Evans tend to be analytical; more focused on his style and discerning the elements that made it so unique.
[Coltrane may be an exception in that he fits into both categories].
Thus we read reams about Bill’s approach to harmonic analysis, thematic analysis, modal analysis, intervallic analysis, reharmonization and advanced reharmonization techniques, rhythmic displacement, upper structures, slash chords, polychords, Drop 2 voicing and cluster chords.
All of this about a musician who told Brian Case in one of his last interviews before his death in September, 1980:
“The fact that music is polytonal, atonal, polyrhythmic, or whatever doesn’t bother me - but it must say something.
I work with very simple means because I'm a simple person, and I came from a simple tradition out of dance music and jobbing, and though I've sorta studied a lot of other music, I feel that I know my limitations and I try to work within them. Really, there's no limit to the expression I could make within the idiom if I had the inner need to say something.
This is where I find the problem. More an emotional, a creative - emotional problem.'”
After reading Bill’s emphasis on the role emotion plays his approach, it is the height of irony to read so much analysis on “the Bill Evans sound” which stresses the intellectual!
Any new recording by Bill is important because it becomes a link in the thread of his improvisational logic. Bill’s work was not about replaying licks and phrases, it was about applying a constantly evolving approach to Jazz piano, seeing what resulted and extending this knowledge to the next stylistic enhancement and embellishment.
Peter Pettinger in his seminal Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, puts this point another way:
“Each time he took the stage, he entered that world he had created for himself and for which he lived, plugging into a continuous stream of consciousness on another plane, gathering up the reins of an ongoing creation.”
And Pettinger adds to this assertion in the following statement:
“The trio played Keystone Korner [San Francisco, CA] for eight nights, starting on Sunday, August 31, 1980. All eight performances were recorded by the club owner, Todd Barkan, and issued in 1989, ..., on an eight-CD set by Alfa Records of Tokyo called Consecration: The Last Complete Collection. ….
On the first night, a rendering of "My Foolish Heart" was conjured to compare with the classic 1961 performance from the Vanguard. Now, with continuity of feeling (and key, A major) over the intervening years, a more adventurous statement was being made, farther flung on the keyboard and freer rhythmically. The original conception had developed in complexity but not deepened in spirit: simply, its essence had remained intact, affirming the initial worth.” [Emphasis mine]
And even when, as pianist Andy LaVerne [in an interview with Wim Hinkle in “Letter from Evans,” 5/2] explains -
“What he was doing was playing ahead of the changes. His right-hand line would be ahead of where the changes were happening in the harmonic rhythm. That way he could create tension and release; when the changes caught up to his line, obviously that would be a release." - this displacement of phrases came absolutely naturally to Evans, developed through feeling, not intellect. He was not trying to throw his listeners but to say more within the form of jazz.
Recordings from the mid to late 1960’s are particularly important in the Evans oeuvre because -
“Evans had by this juncture created an entirely individual harmonic language as estimable in its thoroughness of working as those of, say, Gershwin, Messiaen, or the neoclassical Stravinsky. It was based on the tonal system of the popular song and had evolved at its own painstakingly slow pace, its creator never in a hurry to leap ahead, always content to add voicings and intensify harmony step by step, consolidating all the way.
It was a craft of distinction; because he selected the notes of a chord with extra care he could heighten expressiveness by playing fewer of them,
his thoroughly grounded knowledge enabling him to make quite original substitutions. As each new element of his vocabulary became assimilated into general use, so the ground was laid for the next, and thus his own successive brands of piquancy came alive. This essentially harmonic world was enhanced by inner and outer moving parts, comments and colorings: a note that began life as a chromatic passing note might be transferred into the chord itself, which then emerged as a fresh voicing. The evolution spanned his whole life and was continuing to develop at his death.” [Pettinger; Emphasis mine]
In parallel with the choice of notes was the rhythmic variety into which they were cast, an acuity which had been sharpened early on, during his first excursions with George Russell. In trying to describe some of his rhythmic approaches in the trio, Evans likened the placement of his chords to shadow lettering, in which the shadows rather than the letters are drawn, yet the observer is always conscious only of the letters themselves. He was fascinated by disguise, surprise, and asymmetry; asymmetry, in fact—in the form of displacement—almost developed into an occupational hazard.
Phrases fell according to their content rather than the position of the bar line. Evans referred to an "internalized" beat or pulse, around which the trio played, avoiding the obvious and the explicit. As for cross-rhythms, he had always been at home in two meters at once, leaning fearlessly into the one he was engaged upon. A further subtle dimension in his playing, extra to written time-divisions, is all but beyond description: an impulsive motion that can only be likened to the timing of a great actor or comedian. In ballads especially, this sense was indispensable to their strength.”
In essence Bill lived the following precept in his music:
“It ends up where the Jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious Jazz player, teaches himself. ...
You cannot progress on top of vagueness and confusion, he declared. He was living proof of his own classic maxim: "It is true of any subject that the person that succeeds ... has the realistic viewpoint at the beginning, knowing that the problem is large, and that he has to take it a step at a time, and he has to enjoy this step-by-step learning procedure." [Louis Carvell, “The Universal Mind of Bill Evans,” Rhapsody Films, 1966.]
Pianist Chick Corea once said in paying homage to his accomplishment: “Bill’s value can’t be measured in any kind of terms. He’s one of the great, great artists of the 20th century.”
This being the case, the discovery, preparation and production of more of Bill’s recorded music by George Klabin, Zev Feldman and the team at Resonance Records is to be lauded for having uncovered an extremely valuable new work “by one of the great artists of the 20th century.”
Here’s their media release about their brilliant, new find:
RESONANCE RECORDS' NEW BILL EVANS DISCOVERY EVANS IN ENGLAND
BOWS AS A LIMITED-EDITION 2LP RECORD STORE DAY EXCLUSIVE
ON APRIL 13 AND 2CD/DIGITAL RELEASE ON APRIL 19
Previously Unreleased 1969 Recordings with Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London, England is the Fourth Official Collaboration with the Evans Estate.
Includes an Extensive Book with Rare Photos by Jean-Pierre Leloir; Essays by Acclaimed Author Marc Myers and French Filmmaker Leon Terjanian; Plus Exclusive Interviews with Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell
Los Angeles, February 2019 - Resonance Records, the leading outlet for high-quality, unheard archival jazz releases, proudly announces that it will issue Evans in England, a vibrant, previously unreleased set of recordings featuring music by lyrical piano master Bill Evans with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Marty Morell captured during an engagement at Ronnie Scott's celebrated jazz club in December 1969.
The Evans album continues Resonance's tradition of unveiling a special release on Record Store Day, the annual event promoting independent record retailers. As Variety noted in a 2018 profile of the label, "If Record Store Day had a mascot label, it would be Resonance Records, a small, L.A.-based jazz independent that's become known even outside the genre for producing high-end archival releases tailored especially with the RSD market in mind."
Evans in England, which features 18 electrifying performances by Evans' brilliant trio of 1968-74, will initially be issued on April 13 - Record Store Day 2019 — as a limited edition 180-gram two-LP set, mastered by Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood and pressed at Record Technology, Inc. (RTI); the package will be available only at participating independent record outlets. Two-CD and digital configurations of the set will be available April 19.
The album will include extensive liner notes including essays by producer and Resonance co-president Zev Feldman and jazz writer Marc Meyers; interviews with Gomez, Morell, and filmmaker Leon Terjanian; and rare photos by Chuck Stewart, Jean-Pierre Leloir, and Jan Persson.
Evans in England succeeds a pair of widely acclaimed Evans releases from Los Angeles-based independent Resonance that featured the pianist's short-lived 1968 trio with Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette: 2016's collection of lost studio sides Some Other Time and 2017's set of Dutch radio recordings Another Time. The latter release was named one of the year's top historical releases by DownBeat, JazzTimes, the U.K.'s Jazzwise, and the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll.
In 2012, the label released its first album devoted to unissued music by the pianist, Bill Evans Live at Art D'Lugoff’s Top of the Gate, a set of two never-before-heard 1968 concerts from the Greenwich Village club featuring the trio with Gomez and Morell recorded by Resonance founder and co-president George Klabin.
Producer Feldman says, "It's very exciting for Resonance to be collaborating on our fourth project together with the Evans Estate. These are really extraordinary recordings that represent Bill at his very, very best, and document the great art and chemistry that existed between these three gentlemen — Bill Evans, Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell — captured just a year into what would go on to become Bill's longest-lasting trio."
As has been the case with some of Resonance's other collections of rare and unheard jazz, the music on Evans in England arrived at the label's doorstep via a bolt out of the blue: an unexpected email to Feldman from a man who said he was in possession of some previously unissued Evans recordings.
The gentleman in question was Leon Terjanian, a friend and devoted fan of Evans who had filmed the pianist for his documentary feature Turn Out the Stars, which premiered at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 1981.
Through the late Francis Paudras, the famed biographer of jazz piano titan Bud Powell, Terjanian had made the acquaintance of a French collector who chooses to identify himself only as "Jo." A similarly ardent admirer of Evans' playing, Jo had tracked the keyboardist across Europe and even captured his trio's sets at Ronnie Scott's.
Evans discovered Jo's surreptitious recording activities (which employed a small portable machine), but the musician grew comfortable with his presence, and he allowed his dedicated fan to tape his performances.
In July 2016, Terjanian received a phone call from 84-year-old Jo, who said he wanted to see his Evans recordings issued to the public before his death. That communication prompted contact with Feldman at Resonance. Arrangements were made with the Evans Estate for a legitimately licensed release of the material, with tracks selected by co-presidents George Klabin and Zev Feldman.
Marked by the already empathetic interplay of Evans, Gomez, and Morell, who would perform together for nearly seven years, Evans in England is an exceptional recital that encompasses energetic renderings of such timeless compositions as "Waltz For Debby," "Turn Out the Stars," "Very Early," and "Re: Person I Knew"; extroverted readings of Miles Davis’ "So What" (which Evans originated with the trumpeter sextet on the 1959 classic Kind of Blue) and Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight"; and Evans' earliest recordings of "Sugar Plum" and "The Two Lonely People."
Feldman says, "Bill Evans is an artist who continues to inspire us, all these decades later. I still hear new things in his music upon each new listen, and to find an unearthed set of concert recordings such as these is a cause for widespread joy and jubilation to break out among Evans fans and jazz fans everywhere."
Looking back on the experience of playing with Bill Evans, Gomez says, "He wanted us — me — from the very beginning to just go out there and play and make music, and as long as there's a lot of integrating and honesty and devotion to what we're doing, he was fine. He never put any parameters, or kiboshed anything. So it was an invitation from Bill to try stuff and be creative, and I certainly took the bait."
Morell adds, "It was challenging, inspiring, and just kind of brought the best out of me."
Chuck Israels is a composer/arranger/bassist who has worked with Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock, J.J. Johnson, John Coltrane, and many others. He is best known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio from 1961 through 1966 and his recordings with the Bill’s Trio include The Town Hall Concert; The Second Trio; Trio '65; Live at the Trident; Time Remembered; and Live at Shelley's Manne Hole.
While somewhat technical in places, Chuck’s essay offers a number of insights into what made Bill’s style unique and how through hard work and application he developed the immediately identifiable sound that most Jazz musicians strive to achieve. I thought it might also serve to enrich your listening experience of Bill’s music and provide a gentle reminder to either revisit his recordings if you haven’t in a while or perhaps look into them if Bill’s music is new to you.
The professional life of pianist-composer Bill Evans spanned a period of twenty-five years, from 1955 to 1980, coinciding with the careers of many musicians who made major contributions to the art of American jazz: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Julian Adderly, Philly Joe Jones (the last three worked with Evans in Miles Davis' group), as well as Jim Hall, Scott La Faro, Phil Woods, and many others. Each left his personal mark on music, but there are aspects of Evans' work that may prove uniquely significant. He was a pathfinder while others, claiming to be the avant-garde, trod all too familiar ground. Clifford Brown influenced the sound of almost every jazz trumpeter who followed him. Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins have had similar influence on their musical progeny. The full influence of Evans' music has not yet been felt. General reaction to Evans' work has centered on easily recognizable idiosyncrasies, with much attention given to his voicings and the entirely mistaken idea that he was not playing in meter. Few have gone deeper into his work to find the underlying principles. Superficial imitation of Evans' obvious characteristics only results in the loss of identity of the imitator. In contrast, a search for the universally applicable principles in his music provides a broad avenue for the pursuit of personal jazz expression. His greatest contribution to the development of jazz lies beneath the surface of his style, in his creative use of traditional techniques. Evans was quick to recognize parallel cases to his own in which he could apply his extensive knowledge of the music. He did this by melding the appropriate device to the situation at hand, drawing from a wide range of musical background and history and putting old ideas to work in new ways. Evans' view about rhythm was a combination of the swing of Bud Powell with the more varied cross rhythms of Bartok and Stravinsky; he carried this synthesis to great lengths, achieving a rare subtlety of placement and drive. He would start an idea with a short rhythmic motive, repeat and extend it with increasing complexity, and end it in a burst of notes that resolved those complexities. In this, he was not limited to the basic jazz unit of the eighth note and its typical subdivisions. He used complex relationships, adding to the swing that comes from the more usual duple/ triple conflict in jazz by layering other duples and triples over the more basic ones. He did this with a supreme clarity and unerring sense of his rhythmic goal, which often revealed itself in an exciting resolution many measures after the start of the phrase. The development of these rhythmic techniques can be traced in a long line from Louis Armstrong's performance of "West End Blues" through Lester Young and Charlie Parker, to some of the work of Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz. These men clearly influenced Evans' sense of rhythm, but none drew on as many sources at once as he did. The integrity of this variety in Evans' playing was remarkable. Nothing sounded pasted on or eclectic; ideas filtered through him and emerged with deep conviction and he rarely did anything superficial. Every great jazz musician has a highly developed sense of rhythm, which operates independently of the other musicians around him. He does not need any external input in order to keep time. Evans' internal clock was so well controlled that he could risk considerable rhythmic freedom at the same time that other musicians playing with him took risks of their own. It was rare when such adventurousness resulted in what musicians graphically refer to as a "train wreck." The incidence of dropped beats was remarkably small in Evans' playing, considering the number of opportunities there were for such errors in his daredevil rhythmic style. He actually welcomed the interplay of his colleagues' rhythmic ideas and was empathetic to what they were doing. Another remarkable aspect of Evans' playing was his command of tone color. With fingers like pistons, poised a scant millimeter over the keys, he dropped into the depths of the action as if propelled by steel springs, or he would caress the keys with the stroke of a loving mother touching her baby's cheek. All dynamic gradations short of bombastic pounding were at his command, and he used them to express delicate nuances of melody, and to separate and distinguish various voices of the harmonic texture. In some important ways, Evans' harmonies consisted less of chords than of piling up of contrapuntal lines in which the tension and release between the melody and the secondary voices was exquisitely shaded by his control of pianistic touch. His legato line was unsurpassed by any other pianist. No note was released before its fullest time, giving his playing a richness that resulted from the momentary clashes of overtones as successive tones overlapped in the sounding board. Evans' superficial imitators mistook this sound for the wash that comes from standing on the sustaining pedal. Critics pointing to Evans' influence on young pianists often confused over-pedaling with complex finger-work. His sound was in his fingers and the subtle linear aspect of Evans' harmony was Chopinesque just as his textural interjections were often derived from Rachmaninoff, Liszt, and Debussy. His bass lines were steeped in knowledge of Bach. The entire piano literature was open to his voracious pilferage. Yet everything was synthesized into an integrated style; wide open and broad enough for any musician to find references to his own particular sensibilities. Evans once said that he strove for the improvisational freedom to change direction at any moment. When you realize the rigorous and unflinching logic with which he followed that principle, the enormity of the challenge begins to become apparent. A motive-thirds or fourths, for example-would move upwards through the chord progression, then, in an instant, down, then up, then down, continuing through a series of chords without an error or harmonic miscalculation. The choice of sustaining or abandoning a direction was always made according to aesthetic and expressive principles and never for the convenience of technical limitations. This gave Evans his spontaneity and great flights of fancy, and the ability to accompany, to follow another's musical direction in conversational sympathy. He could listen and put his responses at the service of another musician's creative impulse, and he could do this while maintaining the identity of the accompaniment, adapting his own musical motives to the direction of the soloist. A characteristic part of Evans' keyboard aesthetic lay in the way he separated the main line from the accompanying texture by tone and touch, as well as in the more conventional jazz technique of keeping the melody active in the right hand while the left hand was playing chords. He would sometimes play a darkly colored inner voice as counterpoint to the brighter line of the melody. The technique was certainly pianistic but it was also orchestral in its effect, suggesting French horns against trumpets, or violas against flutes. Evans' playing was colorful, not in the usual sense of flash and mercurial change, but in the sense that control of timbre was an integral part of his playing. This was simply the way he heard music and when he played a harpsichord, the result was the same; different colors for different voices without using the harpsichord's various stops or manuals. This ability to give different color and weight to different voices gave Evans' playing a textural variety not found in the work of more conventional jazz pianists. Often, a single line served as accompaniment to the improvisation in the right hand, establishing a three-voice textural hierarchy. The right-hand melody carried the primary interest, with the bass player's line next in importance. Against this, the third voice appeared in Evans' left hand, clear and separate, shading the other lines, emphasizing a poignant harmony or nailing down a contrasting rhythm. Occasionally (in the blues, for instance) this was done with as few as five chromatic notes, extracted from the changes. The remarkable thing about this was the clarity it produced; by eliminating voices from the chords, Evans brought out the melodic character of the secondary lines, making them respond to, as well as guide, the progress of the improvisation. This also allowed for the possibility of increasing textural density by adding voices to the chords in order to build intensity from chorus to chorus. Another result of this simplified left-hand texture was the freedom to choose more varied colors in the melodic realization of the harmonic progression. If the thrust of melodic development called for chromatic alteration of the harmony, it would not be in conflict with a complete and specific left-hand chord. Motivic or serial development could then take precedence over the more limited interpretation of the harmony that a fully spelled out chord would require. Evans' approach to arranging music was equally individualistic and exacting. The melody of each standard tune was subjected to intense scrutiny until every harmonic nuance was found. Accompaniments were fashioned from standard progressions which were then carefully adjusted and fine-tuned to the contours of each melody. This was done in so complete a way, tat when the accompaniment was played without the melody, the notes that were most strongly evoked were always those of the original missing tune. These exacting progressions were repeated during the improvised choruses, so that the individual character of the piece was implicit in the solo. Obviously this is not the only way to integrate an improvised solo into a piece of music, but if followed to its logical conclusion, as it was by Evans, it can be a strong organizational element and a liberating one. Another aspect of Evans' approach to phrasing and rhythm was not unique to him but was developed from the tradition epitomized by the work of Charlie Parker. The great majority of jazz forms are four square in nature; their phrase structure occurs in regular multiples of twos or fours. The eight-measure phrase is such a commonplace occurrence that few musicians give it much thought once they have internalized it in their formative years. What makes jazz phrasing and rhythm interesting and inventive is how it plays off unpredictable irregularities against the regularity of the under- lying forms. In this, Evans, like Parker, was a master. His phrases would start and end in ever-changing places, often crossing the boundaries between one section of a piece and another. In a thirty-two-measure form, for example, the last two measures are usually a kind of vacuum between choruses where the harmony cycles from the tonic to the dominant in order to be ready for the tonic that normally comes at the beginning of the next chorus. Jazz musicians call this a "turnaround." Many sophisticated improvisers save some of their best "licks" for such moments, partly because the harmonies fall into a limited number of patterns which recycle throughout the performance. Evans' view of the turnaround was that it belonged to the following chorus, rather than to the one just ending. In practice this meant that a new idea introduced at the turnaround could be carried over into the next chorus. This simple conceit is hardly earth-shaking, but it had an electrifying effect on the ensembles. One could move from one chorus to the next with confidence, knowing whether a solo was continuing, building, or ending, by staying alert during the tumarounds. Evans made it a guiding principle to dovetail the joints of a song, making for smooth and interesting transitions. He was not alone in this practice, but he was a master of it and it made everyone who played with him feel comfortable. Evans' compositions are each constructed around one main idea. "Re: Person I Knew" is built on a pedal point; "Walkin' Up," on major chords and disjunct melodic motion; "Blue in Green," on doubling and redoubling of the tempo; and "Time Remembered," on melodic connection of seemingly unrelated harmonic areas. Each piece is so committed to a central idea that a program of Evans' music is foolproof in its variety from composition to composition. "Peace Piece" is an example of the depth of Evans' compositional technique. It is an ostinato piece, composed and recorded long before the more recent superficial synthesis of Indian and American music; in fact, it owes more to Satie and Debussy than to Ravi Shankar. The improvisation starts simply over a gentle ostinato, which quickly fades into the background. Evans allows the fantasy that evolves from the opening motive (an inversion of the descending fifth in the ostinato) more freedom than he would in an improvisation tied to a changing accompaniment. He takes advantage of the ostinato as a unifying clement against which ideas flower, growing more lush and colorful as the piece unfolds. Polytonalities and cross rhythms increase in density as the ostinato undulates gently, providing a central rhythmic and tonal reference. The improvisation becomes increasingly complex against the unrelenting simplicity of the accompaniment, until, near the end, Evans gradually reconciles the two elements. This effective use of form to communicate abstract feelings and ideas is one of the strongest aspects of Evans' work, and one that separates him from most jazz improvisers. His interest in other music that contained this strength guided him intuitively even when his conscious attention was on smaller details. Monk, Bud Powell, and Bela Bartok were equally masters of things Evans needed; he borrowed from them without regard to their source. Evans had an uncanny capacity for concentration and profound expressivity. He considered his work to be "controlled romanticism," and he exercised this control with exquisite care. He knew when to give rein to his imagination and when not to risk losing his grip on the piece. Intellect and deep feeling co-existed in his music, giving the lie to the view that they are mutually exclusive. In this respect he was a perfect partner for Miles Davis, and their recorded collaborations remain monuments in the history of American music. It is true that Evans worked in small forms. The thirty-two-measure song was his own back yard, and he never ceased to find new corners of it to explore. He played with a sense of discovery, even as he worked and reworked the most familiar territory. He had the great improviser's gift for creating spontaneous expressivity in the performance of a piece he had played hundreds of times. But Evans did achieve a high artistic goal; he raised the performance of the simplest song into a worthy experience in expressivity and communication. That he stayed inside the boundaries of the song form is more a reflection of how Evans saw himself than of his depth as a musician. He thought of himself as a man of ordinary gifts committed to honesty in his work. He shunned superficial embellishments he did not feel, and probed deeply into music he had learned well. To some, he sold his talent and his training short by not embracing greater projects, such as a symphony or an opera. When opportunities for large recording and writing projects presented themselves, he left them to others of lesser talent who rarely brought out his best performances. In that sense, he remained, to quote Gunther Schuller, a "cocktail pianist" all his life-in the same sense that Schubert was a "song writer." Evans made two records in collaboration with guitarist Jim Hall, in which one performance in particular stands out as an example of the highest level of achievement in ensemble playing. Their improvisation on "My Funny Valentine" ranks among the great jazz duets, along with the classic Amstrong/Hines "Weatherbird." It has every quality of memorable chamber music. I cannot imagine a note or nuance that might be changed. It is as perfect, in its way, as a movement of a Bartok string quartet. But spontaneous and inspired as that performance is, it is clearly the result of careful preparation. The saving of the chromatic line for the second section of the tune, the pedal tone at the bridge, the exchange of roles in the opening and closing choruses, all indicate an agreement about details that could only come from thorough planning. This is a responsibility that Evans took upon himself, and once a musician has been exposed to his arrangement of a song, it is difficult to accept any other. He found the crevices in which to insert harmonic details that fit so beautifully that later hearings of the melody seem to call his harmonies to your ear. The effect is one of melody, bass line, and inner voices having a three-way magnetic attraction binding them to one another. Sometimes, as in "My Funny Valentine," Evans would leave something out for clarity, or bring it in at a more effective moment. By leaving the chromatic secondary line out of its usual place in the first and last sections of this song, he focused attention on its entrance in the second eight measures, and kept it from disappearing into a background drone. The sphere of Bill Evans' influence is expanding but its ultimate growth depends on the further understanding of the many artistic truths in his music. Time, the exigent critic and generous healer, will dole out the legacy in judicious portions as we find ourselves better prepared to receive it.
