The Individualism of Gil Evans

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Born with the Victorian-sounding name Ian Ernest Gilmore Green, and first marketed by major record labels in the 1960’s as a middle-aged hipster in a business suit, Gil Evans … was a unique American artist who rebelled against stereotypes of class and race. Born in Canada of Australian parentage in 1912, Evans was raised mainly in California.   He seemed to live with a spirit that was marked by the Californian dream in its purest form: to create the impossible in everyday life, through means that are both peaceful and sensual. It was this humble fire, expressed through an unpretentious demeanor and relentless musical curiosity, which fueled Evans' works and won him the respect of such younger rebels of the 1940’s Jazz scene as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan and Max Roach.”

- Eliot Bratton

I wanted to spend time doing blog features about some of my favorite recordings and The Individualism of Gil Evans [Verve 833 804-2] certainly ranks high on that list.

As Richard Cook and Brian Morton observe in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.: “Evans’ name is famously an anagram of Svengali and Gil spent much of his career shaping the sounds and musical philosophies of younger musicians. … His peerless voicings are instantly recognizable.”

Beginning with New Bottle, Old Wine with its very revealing subtitle - “The Great Jazz Composers Interpreted by Gil Evans - and continuing with his orchestrations for Miles Davis on their Columbia epochal associations including Miles Ahead and Porgy and Bess, my repeated listening to Gil’s arrangements revealed a relaxed sophistication, use of very simple materials, and lots of open measures and other forms of space that created a texture in his music that was unlike any other that I’d ever heard before - and with the rare exception - since.

“Texture” joins with melody, harmony and rhythm [meter] as a fourth building block used to create a musical composition? Ironically, of the four basic musical atoms, the most indefinable yet the one we first notice is – “texture.”

“Texture” is the word that is used to refer to the actual sound of the music. This encompasses the instruments with which it is played; its tonal colors; its dynamics; its sparseness or its complexity.

Texture involves anything to do with the sound experience and it is the word that is used to describe the overall impression that a piece of music creates in our emotional imagination.

Often our first and most lasting impression of a composition is usually based on that work’s texture, even though we are not aware of it. Generally, we receive strong musical impressions from the physical sound of any music and these then determine our emotional reaction to the work.

By the time of its issuance in 1964 The Individualism of Gil Evans represented a major step away from the close Columbia collaboration that Gil had formed with Miles and a major step into his own music on Verve [and later Impulse!] which allowed the sonority [texture] of Evans’ arrangements to become even more pronounced.

As Stephanie Stein Crease explains in her definitive biography Gil Evans Out of the Cool: His Life and Music:

“ … Gil held his own first recording session for Verve with Creed Taylor as producer in September 1963. Gil lucked out with Taylor (founder of the Impulse! label and producer of Out of the Cool). Arriving at Verve not long before, Taylor made an immediate splash as producer of the first wildly successful bossa nova records (with Stan Getz, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Joao and Astrud Gilberto), including "The Girl from Ipanema." Verve gave Taylor carte blanche, which he passed along to Gil. Gil was allowed the number of musicians and recording time he wanted. He was even able to record some sketches on studio time—an unheard-of luxury for a composer/arranger. Gil was also allowed to record one or two pieces at a time, whenever he had something ready, instead of conceiving of an entire album beforehand. Taylor was confident that an album would eventually materialize if he gave Gil free reign.

At the first session, Gil recorded two of his own compositions, "Flute Song" and "El Toreador," It wasn't until April 1964 that he recorded another two arrangements; then, in the following six months he recorded six new arrangements for large ensembles and several sketches with a quartet. The resulting album became The Individualism of Gil Evans, released in late 1964.

The album contains some of Gil's best music on record. Selections include Kurt Weill's "The Barbara Song" and four Evans originals: "Las Vegas Tango," "Flute Song," "Hotel Me," and "El Toreador." Several of the musicians, including Johnny Coles, Steve Lacy, Al Block, Jimmy Cleveland, Tony Studd, Bill Barber, Elvin Jones, and Paul Chambers, played on all the sessions, preserving a consistency in the textures, mood, and overall sound. Other stellar personnel—Eric Dolphy on various woodwinds, Wayne Shorter on tenor, Phil Woods on alto, and Kenny Burrell on guitar—were on hand for some sessions and recorded with Gil for the first time. Gil plays piano on every track, and his performance, particularly on "The Barbara Song," functions as an indicator of his conceptual direction. On the Weill song, the mood is full of pathos, with Wayne Shorter's tenor sax taking up the cry. "El Toreador," built on one chord, sounds like a development of one of the Barracuda cues; Johnny Coles's plaintive trumpet is the foremost voice, cutting through the rumblings of the low brass and three acoustic basses and a whirring tremolo in the high reeds.

The musicianship on all the Verve sessions is of the highest order. The musicians dig deeply into the music, both as soloists and as ensemble players. Again there is an Ellingtonian parallel; the musical personalities are so strong on these recordings that horn voicings and ensemble passages are characterized by the collective sound of the people playing them.”

And here are excerpts from Gene Lees’ original liner notes to  The Individualism of Gil Evans:

“The gifted young composer, arranger, and critic Bill Mathieu once wrote of Gil Evans: "The mind reels at the intricacy of his orchestral and developmental techniques. His scores are so careful, so formally well-constructed, so mindful of tradition that you feel the originals should be preserved under glass in a Florentine museum."

Mathieu's feelings about Evans are not unusual. Without doubt the most individualistic and personal jazz composer since Duke Ellington, Evans is held in near-reverence by a wide range of composers, arrangers, instrumentalists, and critics. This feeling is only intensified by the fact that he is a rather inaccessible man — not unfriendly, or anti-social; just politely, quietly inaccessible — whose output has been small, and all of it is indeed remarkable.

What is it that makes Evans' work unique? This is impossible to say in mere words, but with your indulgence, I'm going to try to clarify some of it. What I want to say is not for the professional musician but the layman; the pros are invited to skip the new few paragraphs.

Every "song" is built of two primary components: its melody and its harmony. Rhythm is the third major factor, but I want to confine myself to the first two.

As the melody is played, a certain sequence of chords occurs beneath it. Now the bottom note of these chords sets up a sort of melody of its own. This is referred to as the "bass line" and it has great importance to the texture and flavor of the music. As a first step to the appreciation of Gil Evans, try not hearing the melody but listening to the bass line on some of these tracks.

Between the bass note and the melody note fall the other notes of the chord. You can put them down in a slap-dash fashion, so that you've got merely chords occurring in sequence like a line of telephone poles holding up the wire of melody; or you can link the inner notes of one chord to the inner notes of the next one, setting up still other melodies within the music. These new lines are called the "inner voices" of the harmonization. How well he handles inner voices is one of the measures of a composer's or an arranger's writing skill.

Gil's handling of them is often astonishing. His original melody, his bass line, and his inner lines are always exquisite. The result is that one of Gil's scores is faintly analogous to a crossword puzzle: it can be "read" both vertically (up through the chords) or horizontally in the form of ihe various melodies he sets up. Heard both ways simultaneously, his music can be breathtaking.

That's part of it.

Another and important part is his use of unusual instrumentations. Evans has virtually abandoned the standard jazz instrumentation of trumpets - trombones - saxes. He uses flutes, oboes, English horns (the standard classical woodwinds), along with French horns and a few of the conventional jazz instruments to extend the scope of the jazz orchestra. Evans was one of the first to use French horns in jazz, in the days when he was chief arranger for the celebrated Claude Thornhill orchestra. Not only does Gil use "non-jazz" instruments (usually played by jazz players, however), but he puts them together in startling ways, to create unearthly and fresh lovely sounds.

Finally, there's his sense of form, of logical construction. Everything he writes builds to sound and aesthetically satisfying climaxes, beautifully developing the previously-stated material. I know of no one in jazz with a more highly-developed sense of form than Gil Evans.

Yet, with all his gifts, Gil is oddly down-to-earth about his music. Once, when I told him that some people were having trouble deciding whether an album he had done with Miles Davis was classical music or jazz, he said, "That's a merchandiser's problem, not mine." Another time he said, "I write popular music." What he meant, of course, is that he wanted no part of pointless debates about musical categorizations; that he was making no claims on behalf of his music; and that since that music grew out of the traditions of American popular music, he was content to call it that.

On another occasion he said, "I'm just an arranger" This comment I reject. Even when Gil is working with other people's thematic material, what he does to it constitutes composition. …

To say that this album has been long-awaited is no cliche. It is the first Gil Evans recording in three years. "I stayed away from music for two years!' he said. "I wanted to look around and see what was happening in the world outside of music."

Welcome back.

We've missed you.”

The following video montage has on offer the Nothing Like You track from The Individualism of Gil Evans.

Eric Alexander: 25 to 50

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"Developing your sound is a lifelong endeavor. Ninety percent of the practicing I do is working on my sound."

"I guess more than anything, strong piano players make me play better: the stronger they are, the more in my face, the better I play. It's almost like I don't have to come up with anything on my own — they just steer me along.”

"I've always been partial to soulful playing, the stuff that connects with people; to me, that's everything. I don't want to play down to people, but I always want to maintain those elements that have made jazz what it is."

"I'm just not interested in that kind of obligation right now," he says with easy acceptance. "I don't really want to be in charge yet. I'd really rather be in other people's bands, because I feel I have a lot to learn in that respect. I'd just like to play my role within the larger context."

"I think I'm just naturally akin to that kind of sound and phrasing [referring to Dexter Gordon.] More than anything, I've always loved the bigger sounds. But harmonically, I'm more in tune with people like Hank Mobley — even though I don't particularly sound like him — and Sonny Stitt, for sure. When I first delved into playing, I sort of lived and breathed Sonny Stitt, because he was just so perfect."

"Right now, I just pick tunes that really reflect where my heart lies, the kind that feel most comfortable, most natural. But I find that different tunes lead my solos in different ways, so I pick them with an understanding of what kind of solo each tune will bring out of me."

- Eric Alexander, tenor saxophonist

It’s hard to believe that it’s been twenty-five years since I first heard tenor saxophonist performing on record, but then, most things these days “seem like it was just yesterday." [Eric turns 50 in August of this year]

The occasion was his 1992 New York Calling Criss Cross Jazz CD [1077] which I bought at the time primarily because it featured Kenny Washington on drums.

Boy, was I in for a big surprise as in addition to Eric's super playing, the disc also introduced me to John Swana on trumpet; Richard Wyands, piano and Peter Washington, bass along with Kenny round out a first-rate rhythm section.

Since then, Eric has gone on to develop a formidable career in the Jazz - not an easy thing to do these days - with his own quartet which is usually made up of Harold Mabern on piano, John Webber on bass and Joe Farnsworth on drums.

John and Joe also join Eric when he performs with the group One for All, a unit that is very much reminiscent of the classic Art Blakey Sextet. Pianist David Hazeltine joins John and Joe in the rhythm section and Jim Rotondi on trumpet and Steve Davis on trombone make up the front-line along with Eric.

Eric is also a member of Mike LeDonne’s Hammond B-3 organ Quartet along with Peter Bernstein on guitar and Joe Farnsworth once again on drums. Eric works regularly with Mike’s combo at Smoke’s in New York City.

Either leading his own group or as a member of One for All or Mike LeDonne’s foursome, Eric is a fixture on the New York Jazz scene as well as the International Jazz Festival circuit and makes frequent trips to Japan and to Chicago [he was born in Galesburg, IL, about 200 miles west of Chicago].

Over the past 25 years, Eric has made over two dozen recordings as leader for labels including Delmark, Hep, Milestone, Criss Cross, Sharp Nine, Venus and High Note. You can locate information about these recordings by clicking on the following link to Eric’s page on Discogs.

Eric talked about his early and formative Jazz experiences in The Windy City and The Big Apple with Neil Tesser who incorporated them into the following insert notes to New York Calling [Criss Cross Jazz CD 1077].

New York Calling

“In some ways. Eric Alexander at 25 is just an old-fashioned boy. When he lifts the tenor saxophone to his lips, the notes spill out on a plush carpet of sound that brings to mind the sax founts of earlier years: Hawkins, Gordon, Rollins, Coltrane, and the giant-toned Chicago tenor men, like Gene Ammons and Johnny Griffin, Ira Sullivan, and Von Freeman. ("Developing your sound is a lifelong endeavor," Alexander admits with a mixture of awe and pride. "Ninety percent of the practicing I do is working on my sound.")

He prefers a rhythm section that shoves right up against him — accompanists who rank subtlety several notches below unadorned swing and the independent line. You can find the model for this hard-driving, no-holds-barred style in the explosive fire of bebop and the earthy percussion patterns of the 50s, that decade when hard-bop roamed the planet. ("I guess more than anything, strong piano players make me play better: the stronger they are, the more in my face, the better I play. It's almost like I don't have to come up with anything on my own — they just steer me along.)

He insists, with sure instincts about jazz's earliest roots, that his music communicates above all with immediacy and warmth — one reason he has long loved the soulful organ bands of the 50s and 60s. No wonder, then, that when he arrived in Chicago, shortly after college, he quickly made his way onto the city's south side club scene, and from there into the touring band led by the organist Charles Earland. ("I've always been partial to soulful playing, the stuff that connects with people; to me, that's everything. I don't want to play down to people, but I always want to maintain those elements that have made jazz what it is.")

The old-fashioned can become suddenly new, though, in the right context. For instance, we live in a time when a truckload of jazz's young lions can barely restrain themselves from establishing their own bands; so when Alexander states his desire to hook on as a sideman with established mentors, it strikes us as something novel. ("I'm just not interested in that kind of obligation right now," he says with easy acceptance. "I don't really want to be in charge yet. I'd really rather be in other people's bands, because I feel I have a lot to learn in that respect. I'd just like to play my role within the larger context.")

And in an era way past the demise of the cutting session, the "battles of the bands," and the idea that competition gets in the way of music's loftier goals, Eric Alexander arrives largely as the result of a contest — the Thelonious Monk Institute's 1991 competition for tenor saxophonists, in which he finished second to Joshua Redman (and a notch above his Criss Cross labelmate, Chris Potter). Not bad for a guy who started playing the tenor — in fact, who had begun concentrating on jazz at all — just five years earlier.

Born in 1968 in western Illinois, Alexander grew up in Washington state, but headed back to the midwest to attend Indiana University — as an alto saxophonist studying classical music. Before that year ended, however, he had discovered an unexpected affinity for jazz, leading him to transfer to the exceptional jazz program at William Paterson College in New Jersey.

He had also discovered the tenor saxophone, in a story worthy of those "girl-next-door" stories that dot fiction and cinema, and always seem too obvious to be true.

Alexander's father had purchased a tenor sax for him years earlier, but he had paid little attention to it. "The first time I really played the tenor was at a wedding gig, my freshman year in college," he remembers. "It was just a borrowed horn, but it just felt so much better than the alto did." In fact, says Alexander, it felt better than the alto ever did, even though he had been playing the smaller horn for more than five years. "It was right at that point that I decided I wanted to switch to jazz. The alto felt so horrible to me afterwards that to this day, I haven't been able to play it at all." Not long after making this recording, Alexander simply sold his alto, with the firm conviction that he had found his one true instrumental love.

Any chorus of any tune on this album and you'll understand the romance. Despite Alexander's protestations about the work he must do on his tone, he commands a huge and supple sound: like an extension of his own voice, it suggests that tenor players are in fact born, not made. He devours chord changes, the more the better, with both an inviting urgency and a focus on the details of finding new linkages between those changes: eloquent testimony to his tireless study of harmony. And his pinpoint control of the time allows him to regularly lag ever-so-slightly behind the beat, giving even his most ferocious improvisations the unflappable quality of a man truly in charge.

For all those reasons, Alexander's playing has drawn comparisons to that of Dexter Gordon. Alexander certainly doesn't mind such comments (Dexter being one of the many tenorists who've shaped his music); but he quickly points out that any such similarities involve something other than conscious imitation: "I think I'm just naturally akin to that kind of sound and phrasing. More than anything, I've always loved the bigger sounds. But harmonically, I'm more in tune with people like Hank Mobley — even though I don't particularly sound like him — and Sonny Stitt, for sure. When I first delved into playing, I sort of lived and breathed Sonny Stitt, because he was just so perfect." Don't ignore, either, the important guidance of Von Freeman, the legendary Chicago saxist who regularly presides over late-night blowing sessions at which he encourages younger players with both his words and his remarkable musical actions.

Alexander's Chicago experience remains a pivotal one for the saxist, who surfaced in the midwest shortly after college. "I was always kind of obsessed with living there; my mother's family is from Chicago, and of course, I was fascinated with the idea of playing with those organ groups on the south side." After his time with Charles Earland, Alexander heard New York's call, settling there in the summer of 1992; but he has re-created his Chicago jam-session experiences with sessions at the club named Augie's, where he can be found most weekends performing with such storied older players as the baritone saxist Cecil Payne and the altoist John Jenkins.

Alexander's Criss Cross debut finds him in the company of John Swana, the great Philadelphia trumpeter whose two Criss Cross albums have showcased his pure melodies and effervescent tone — and a rhythm section with whom Alexander knew he could comfortably work. After all, pianist Richard Wyands, bassist Peter Washington, and drummer Kenny Washington made up the rhythm section that boosted Alexander to his second-place finish at the Monk competition. The two unrelated Washingtons have developed a tasteful, versatile, and potent partnership reminiscent of earlier such pairings (Paul Chambers & Philly Jo Jones; Bob Cranshaw & Billy Higgins). But it takes nothing away from them to suggest you pay special heed to the solos, and even moreso the accompaniments, of Wyands, a mature and steadying player who was one of the young tenorist's instructors at William Paterson.

Alexander selected the material for this date without much fuss: "Right now, I just pick tunes that really reflect where my heart lies, the kind that feel most comfortable, most natural. But I find that different tunes lead my solos in different ways, so I pick them with an understanding of what kind of solo each tune will bring out of me." New York Calling resembles a typical, well-spiced Eric Alexander set, with highlights everywhere. You'll find your own: I lean toward the Rollinsesque nature of his version of Swedish Schnapps, as well as the way he has turned Wives And Lovers into an Afro-Cuban dynamo . And anyone who chooses to resurrect the lovely and forgotten Arthur Schwartz ballad Then I'll Be Tired Of You — with verse intact, no less! — deserves kudos for that alone.

In the early part of this century, the American novelist Edith Wharton spoke of what she considered a "common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before." Eric Alexander, like many of his contemporaries, has no such fear. But his utter mastery of the jazz fundamentals sets him quite apart from most of the pack. That skill allows him to provide new twists on old ideas — which here serve as brand-new inspirations to a saxophonist of unquestioned accomplishment and boundless promise.”

NEIL TESSER

You can check out Eric’s powerful and propulsive tenor playing on the following video montage that features his original composition One for M which is the opening track on New York Calling.

Bill Evans: Time Remembered

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Time Remembered is an original composition by pianist Bill Evans, but in the context of the title of this feature it has an old and new connotation to it.

First the “old” which has three primary meanings for me: [1] I remember spending many nights listening to pianist Bill Evans while he was in residence at Shelly Manne Hole in Hollywood, CA for most of May, 1963; [2] I remember listening to my drum teacher Larry Bunker work his first night as a member of Bill’s trio along with bassist Chuck Israels during Evans’ stint at Shelly’s; [3] I remember Bill’s original Time Remember being performed for the first time while this version of Bill’s trio played the May, 1963 engagement.

In Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings [Yale University Press] Peter Pettinger’s seminal biography of Bill, he describes the context for the evolution of Bill’s original Time Remembered this way:

“During the late 1940’s, when pianist Bill Evans was a student in Louisiana, many young English jazz musicians worked the ocean liners to and from New York, drawn like moths to the beacon of bebop. One such musician was a tenor saxophonist named Ronnie Scott, who, bowled over by the proliferation of New York clubs, determined to start up one of his own in London. It took a while, but in 1959 Ronnie Scott's, destined to become one of the great jazz clubs of the world, began life humbly in a Soho basement. During the first year, West Coast drummer Shelly Manne dropped in, and Scott maintained that Manne opened his own club in Hollywood soon after as a direct response to the atmosphere at "Ronnie's."

That club was Shelly's Manne Hole, and Bill Evans spent all of May 1963 there, beginning in a duo with his old bass-playing friend Red Mitchell. Chuck Israels was on tour with "The Midgets of Jazz"  — [drummer] Ben Riley's name for the Paul Winter group —  but was able to wind it up in Denver and replace Mitchell for the last two weeks at the Manne Hole. Shelly Manne himself sat in from time to time — after all, it was his club. Israels said:

‘After a few nights I got to talking with many of the Hollywood musicians who were corning in to hear us and I paid particular attention to the pianist, Clare Fischer, who kept insisting that the dapper, elegantly bearded man, whom I had seen listening intently to Bill's piano playing, was the most sensitive possible drummer for us to have and that I should persuade Bill to invite him to sit in. To say that that first experience of playing with Larry Bunker was a revelation would only be half the story.... I smiled and Bill grinned broadly and dug in to play all the more and Larry was hired on the spot to finish out the job with us. The following week, Wally Heider came in to record the group for Riverside.’

Thus was fulfilled the one remaining project on the Evans-Riverside books. Both the pianist and his producer of almost seven years, Orrin Keepnews, wanted their final collaboration to be a live recording with the working trio, a logical follow-up to the 1961 Village Vanguard dates with LaFaro and Motian. But when the time came, Keepnews was disbanding his ailing company in New York and was unable to get out to Hollywood. The sessions, issued as Bill Evans Trio at Shelly's Manne Hole and Time Remembered, were supervised by Los Angeles-based Richard Bock.

We have Israels's word for it that the events of those two evenings are accurately represented on the records. ‘You can hear Larry's hands through the wires on the brushes," he said, "feel the exact weight of his foot on the Bass drum and identify the timbre of each cymbal and tom-tom. The sound of the bass, too, is faithfully preserved. That was just before jazz bassists almost universally switched over to the metal strings most symphony players had used for years.’

The empathy between Israels and Evans was evident in these fine performances. Together with Larry Bunker they reveled in creative interplay and were obviously at home in the congenial surroundings of this intimate club, to date the pianist's second-favorite to the Village Vanguard. Israels was more relaxed than on the studio sessions of a year ago, swinging notably on his own Blues in F, and Bunker was clearly relishing a break from his habitual studio round, contributing a continuous web of sympathy and propulsion. There was the feeling that the trio was among friends, unpressurized to strive against any odds — for the odds were, indeed, stacked in their favor. Evans had at his disposal a baby grand, which, though thin and wiry on top, was capable in his hands of a pellucid middle-range tone.

Evans had brought new material, and his colleagues were thrown in at the deep end and left to surface as best they might, always to be the pianist's way of working. Another surprise was his harmonic rethinking of Lover Man, the middle eight of which was reconstructed outright. The pianist's motivation was sound, the usual chords being vapid at ballad tempo. He felt a need for a more densely changing (and deeper) key exploration by way of central contrast. His solution satisfied in a formal sense, as well as providing a firmer, yet more variegated foundation for fantasy.

Time Remembered, the only Evans original issued from these evenings, received its first trio exposition on disc. The piece's harmonic structure is notable for studiously avoiding the dominant seventh. As a result, a modal feeling permeates the timeless progression of its predominantly minor sevenths. In this performance the floating chords at the end of the piano solo spilled gently and seamlessly over the beginning of the bass solo, the overlapping another feature of the chamber approach, the desire to get away from a "blowing list." That three-way discourse, highly developed in the First Trio, was now operating more naturally, less self-consciously, the result arguably a more convincing vindication of the Evans ‘creed of interplay.’

The traditional night off was Monday, but Shelly asked Bill to take Tuesdays off instead so that the local musicians could hear him. Israels told me: "I saw most every California musician that I had heard of in the club during that engagement, some of them (like [pianist] Terry Trotter and [drummer] Bill Goodwin) almost every night." Goodwin himself recalled Evans's condition: ‘He wasn't in very good shape, physically. That was when I first met him, and he was beautiful — a wonderful guy. It was really incongruous that he could be so messed up and yet be such a normal, regular person.’

Like Dave Jones before him, the engineer Wally Heider captured the trio, and the ambience of the club, to perfection. (Ironically, the club was eventually forced to move, as the sound of the heavier electric bands began spilling through into the echo chamber of Heider's own recording studio next door.) These recordings formed a fitting farewell for Evans and Orrin Keepnews at Riverside, one of the great recording partnerships in jazz. Though they bid adieu professionally, Orrin continued to follow Bill's career avidly, and they remained friends until the end.

Evans later reflected on the value of small record companies at the start of an artist's career; ‘You need those companies; actually jazz needs those companies because, until you establish yourself, [they] offer an entranceway. ...To sign a standard union contract for scale, with Riverside, for two records, was to me the biggest thrill that could happen at that time. ... I never got a royalty statement, not even as by law every three months — never saw one, never expected one— didn't care really, because at that point you want to get your records out there. So it works for both.’

Late in 1963, Bill Grauer, in charge of business at Riverside, died of a heart attack. Evans had had little to do with him but had always found him rather a rough character. The pianist's sense of black humor prompted him to observe: ‘I figure he must have died in self-defense.’  The company had been sliding steadily toward bankruptcy, and finally folded in mid-1964.”

The “new” Time Remembered that prompted this retrospective involves the recent issue of the film Bill Evans: Time Remembered by Bruce Siegel.

For the last 25 years, Bruce Spiegel has been a producer/editor at CBS News/48 Hours. During that time, he’s also produced, edited and directed a number of films and documentaries. In 2002 he co-produced the award winning TV documentary “9-11” which won both an Emmy (2002) and Peabody Award (2003). In 2012, alongside Wynton Marsalis (jazz musician and artistic director at Jazz at Lincoln Center) and Hugh Masakela (South African music legend), Spiegel co-produced a CBS News/48 Hours TV documentary titled “Nelson Mandela: Father of a Nation”. The documentary explored the South African music that was used for Nelson Mandela’s eulogy, and won The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Excellence Award in 2014.

In Bill Evans: Time Remembered Bruce Spiegel has produced a complete documentary giving you insights into Bill Evans; not just the musician, but also the person. The film moves chronologically starting with Bill's childhood in New Jersey and culminating with details about his death.

As Bruce recounts: "The film Bill Evans, Time Remembered took me 8 years to make. Eight years of tracking down anybody who knew Bill and who played with him, to try and find out as much as I could about the elusive and not easy to understand Bill Evans. I feel very honored to have had the chance to interview and get to know good guys that spent a lot of time with Bill: Billy Taylor, Gene Lees, Tony Bennett, Jack DeJohnette, Jon Hendricks, Jim Hall, Bobby Brookmeyer, Chuck Israels, Paul Motian, Gary Peacock, Joe LaBarbera. It was a once in a life time experience talking to these gifted talented guys about their time in jazz music, about their “Time Remembered“ with Bill Evans."

"The film was a bull's eye at capturing as much as one can capture of someone's music, pain, and life story. My family is forever grateful to your outstanding work." - Debby Evans (Waltz for Debby)"

"The film is musically intriguing and sensitively crafted. Not soppy with just the right amount of honesty regarding his personal life." - Nenette Evans

The film is available for preview, rental or purchase at the following website - http://www.billevanstimeremembered.com/

If you are a Bill Evans fan, the film is a must view.

Oh, and if you haven’t heard them, you might also want to pick up copies of Bill Evans Trio at Shelly's Manne Hole and Time Remembered which are both available as Original Jazz Classics CDs.

"Criticism" - by Martin Williams

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"Read anything of Williams you can lay your hands on.. . . His knowledge of jazz is all but unmatched."            

- Washington Review

"Martin Williams persistently gets at essences, and that is why he has contributed so much to the very small body of authentic jazz criticism."                               

- Nat Hentoff

"The most knowledgeable, open-minded, and perceptive American jazz critic today."               - The Washington Post

Back when the world was young, I had a university professor who railed at us to include the “Who, what, when, where, why and significance.” for each answer that we entered into our essay examination booklets.

In this way, we would be “set on a course to” explain the importance of the event, person or problem that was the focus of the examination question.

“Think critically; describe and discern; look for multiple causes; come at the thing from a number of perspectives,” he would say.

Little did I know at the time, that this was the perfect formula for training as a Jazz critic, for as the late, distinguished Jazz critic Martin Williams asserts “ … it is the critic’s business to be as perceptive and knowledgeable as he/she can. And critical perception (however much training it needs) is ultimately either there or not there.”

Of course, I understand rationally what Martin is saying, but experientially I rarely put myself in the position of becoming a Jazz critic.

As you may have noticed, I describe and annotate recordings, films and books about Jazz on these pages, but I rarely critically evaluate them in the way that Martin describes as the functional basis for Jazz criticism.

Maybe it’s because I know how hard it is to play this stuff and I don’t want to put down other musician’s efforts and attempts. Or perhaps it is because of a lack of training and/or practice in Jazz criticism

Perhaps, too, my reluctance is the result of not having a clear and complete understanding of exactly what is it that a critic does.

Enter Martin Williams who provides this explanation of “Criticism” in an essay which can be found in his compilation - Jazz In Its Time [New York: Oxford University Press, 1989].

To put the piece in perspective, it was written in 1958, at the height of the modern form of Jazz’s popularity in the USA.

Criticism

“A musician is supposed to have said recently that the criticism of jazz is a kind of joke and that there are no jazz critics. Without agreeing with him entirely, I am very sympathetic to his statement. But I say this to indicate that to me the words critic and criticism are rather special ones. A man who makes comments or reports on jazz records (or books, or plays, or movies) is not necessarily worthy of the title of critic.

The criticism of jazz is, like the criticism of any other art, "popular" or "fine," a kind of criticism. It is not a branch of publicity, nor a sideline of journalism. And a critical ability is not a natural consequence of an enthusiasm for jazz or of a knowledge of jazz, although it needs both of these things.

Philosophers would have us believe that criticism is a branch of philosophy, and some artists that it is a branch of creativity. But criticism has its own muse, and however much enlightenment he constantly gets from both the philosopher and the artist, the critic needs a distinct, innate critical talent, a special sensibility and way of looking at things. His task is of an order much lower than that of either philosopher or artist, of course, but the ability he needs for his job is unique and uncommon, and a man either has it or doesn't have it. If the philosopher or artist (or journalist or historian) also has this critical ability, so much the better.

I think that the state of criticism of jazz in America is low, but I also think that the criticism of movies, plays, music in general, and painting is also low. Literature is lucky — it has a top level of criticism which is an excellent counter to the average American book review.

The innate critical ability is not enough in itself. It needs to be trained, explored, disciplined, and tested like any other talent.

If I recommended that this training should begin with Plato, Aristotle, and Lucretius and end with Eliot, Tovey, and Jung, I would not be saying something academic or pretentious but merely stating the most ordinary commonplace of Western civilization as it exists. And the critic should also know as much as he can of the best criticism being written around him in all fields.

But it is also the critic's business to be as perceptive and knowledgeable as he can. And critical perception (however much training it needs) is ultimately either there or not there.

The critic's questions are "How?" and "Why?" not merely "What?"

The points which follow come, with some changes, from Matthew Arnold. I present them not because I am especially interested in promoting Arnold's attitudes nor in promoting any "system," but because they seem to me to have something to say at this moment to the jazz writer and his reader.

1.  The critic's first question is what is the work trying to do? Notice that this does not say, what do you think the artist ought to be trying to do. It also has little to do with a clairvoyant view inside the artist's head. And it assumes that the critic has observed the form of the piece and that he absorbed it with his feelings as well.

2.  The second is, how well does it do it, and how and why so?

3.  The third is, is it worth doing? Notice that this is the last question and not the first.

4.  The critic should compare everything with the best that he knows whenever the comparison seems just and enlightening.

The questions are not easy, but no one ever said that criticism was easy, and even the very best critics can and will fail on at least some of them.

Ultimately, the critic makes a judgment, an evaluation. Value is based, in the final analysis, on feeling, not reason. But by feeling I mean a rational, conscious, individual function. I do not mean emotion which is irrational, impersonal, and can be irresponsible.

We have all heard it said that the criticism of jazz was once left to amateurs. That is not entirely true, nor is there any lack of amateurs today. But we do have now several writing about jazz who, although they really know what criticism is, don't know enough about music. On the other hand, there are some who know music, but don't know what criticism is. In jazz, of course, there is danger in knowing music since we are apt to apply the categories and standards of Western music rigidly and wrongly thereby. And there is also danger in knowing jazz: we may reject truly creative things because our knowledge of the past makes us think we know what a man ought to be doing — but that is true in any art.

The man who reviews jazz records has a terrible task: he can never, like his "classical" brother, judge an interpretation or performance against a norm because every jazz record is, in effect, a new work. Also, as George Orwell said of the hack book reviewer, day after day he must report on performances to which he has had little or no reaction worth committing to print — and that is true of the best critics and is neither a reflection on them nor necessarily on the music.

On the other hand, there could not possibly be as much true creativity in jazz as we are constantly told that there is, even though the medium is very much alive. How many novels, plays, poems, symphonies, paintings done in a year are really excellent?

And I wonder how many promising careers—and lives—have been wrecked because of indiscriminate over-praise. I know of a few personally. Even if a musician is wise enough to discount what passes for criticism in jazz, he would have to be inhuman not to be somehow affected by it.

There is one job in jazz criticism that is neglected and which needs to be done, I think. It is also one which, since jazz is music and music the most abstract of the arts, is very difficult.

It is a better job on content and meaning. I am not opposed to technical analysis. We need more of that, too, and it can also help us with meaning, of course.

But especially now that jazz is so sophisticated, we need to talk frankly and honestly about what it is saying.

By an examination of content, I do not mean a kind of enthusiastic impressionism. Nor do I mean the kind of clever, chi-chi adjective-mongering we are all too familiar with. The critic's duty is accuracy and he should not sacrifice it for cleverness.

Of course, such an examination cannot be made with prejudice or prejudgment. The first question is, what does this music express, not whether or not it should be expressing it.

The thing that separates listeners and commentators into "schools," I am convinced by the way, is not musical devices — passing chords, diminished ninths or sixteenth notes, or the lack of them —

but the content that such devices enable a given style to handle. I think that jazz should be able to express as much as it can possibly learn to express in its own way.

Of course, the artistic and musical expression of emotion is not the same as its communication. A snarl, a sigh, a scream — these things communicate emotion, but they are not art, only a part of the raw material of art which the artist transforms.

I recommend this first, because greater consciousness is a part of growth in an art as well as in an individual.

I also recommend it because the appeal of jazz is still so very irrational, and I do not think it should be so much so any longer. (Of course, the appeal of all art is ultimately irrational, by definition, because it is art. But to many who like jazz, its appeal is almost entirely so.) It is the critic's business to make it less so, and unless he does, both he and jazz may be trapped. And dealing with content is the only way to give a good answer to that third question: is it worth doing?

As it is, we assure ourselves that jazz is an "art" and often proceed to talk about it as if it were a sporting event, an excuse for us to be verbally clever, a branch of big-time show biz, or an emotional outburst that affected us in a way we are not quite sure of. Perhaps we can at least do our best to create the kind of climate in which a jazz critic could function and which an art deserves.” (1958)