Jazz pianist, born in Plainfield, New Jersey, USA. He studied music at Southeastern Louisiana College and at Mannes School of Music, New York City, playing when he could. Musicians admired his intricate, ruminative style, but he made no impression on fans until he joined Miles Davis's great sextet in 1958. He stayed only six months but played on some brilliant recordings, including the classic Kind of Blue (1959). In 1960, he led a trio at the Village Vanguard, and found critical and popular success. For the rest of his career, he recorded prolifically, partly to support a heroin habit, but nevertheless with great acclaim, winning three Grammy Awards and numerous prizes. Among his best works are At the Village Vanguard (1961), Know What I Mean (1961), Intermodulation (1966), and Alone Again (1977). In the period covered by these records, he was a dominant stylist in jazz, and a major influence.
| William John Evans | |
|---|---|
| Bill Evans | |
| Born |
August 16, 1929 Plainfield, New Jersey, USA |
| Died |
September 15, 1980 New York, New York, USA |
William John Evans, (better known as Bill Evans) (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was one of the most famous jazz pianists of the 20th century;
Early life
Bill Evans was born to a mother of Rusyn ancestry and a father of Welsh descent, in Plainfield, New Jersey.
1950s
Working in New York in the 1950s, Evans gained a profile as a sideman in traditional and so-called third stream avant-garde jazz bands. Recordings made with seminal composer/theoretician George Russell are notable for Evans's solo work, including the famous "All About Rosie." In 1956, he made his debut album, New Jazz Conceptions, for Riverside Records. Producer Orrin Keepnews was convinced that he should record the reluctant Evans because of a demo tape played to him over the phone by guitarist Mundell Lowe. In 1958, Evans was hired as the only white musician in the famed Miles Davis Sextet. Though his time with the band was brief - no more than eight months - it was one of the most fruitful collaborations in the history of jazz, as Evans's introspective scalar approach to improvisation deeply influenced Davis's conception. Evans's contribution to the album was overlooked for years;
1960s
At the turn of the decade, Evans led a trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. With this group, Evans's focus settled on traditional jazz standards and original compositions, with an added emphasis on interplay among the band members that often bordered on collective improvisation. The collaboration between Evans and the talented young bassist LaFaro was particularly fruitful, with the two achieving an unprecedented level of musical empathy. The trio recorded four albums: Portrait in Jazz (1959), Explorations, Sunday at the Village Vanguard, and Waltz for Debby (all recorded in 1961).
In addition to revolutionizing the dynamics of the jazz trio, Evans began to display a lower dynamic range in his music.
LaFaro's untimely death at age twenty-five in a car accident, ten days after the Vanguard performances, devastated Evans. Some unique contexts were attempted, such as a big-band live album at Town Hall, which was recorded but never issued due to Evans's dissatisfaction (although the trio portion of that concert was made into its own successful release), and an album with a symphony orchestra, which was never warmly received by critics.
During this time, Helen Keane, Evans's manager, began having an important influence. Apart from being the first woman in her field, she significantly helped maintain the progress, or prevented the deterioration, of Evans's career in spite of his self-damaging lifestyle.
In 1966, Evans discovered the remarkable young Puerto Rican bass player Eddie Gomez. One of the most significant releases during this period is Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival, from 1968. Although it was the only album Evans made with drummer Jack DeJohnette, it has remained a critical and fan favorite, due to the trio's remarkable energy and interplay.
In 1964 Evans recorded Waltz for Debby, an album with the Swedish jazz vocalist Monica Zetterlund. This became Evans's most stable and long-lasting group. The group made several excellent albums, including The Bill Evans Album, Since We Met, and The Tokyo Concert; Morell was an energetic, straight-ahead drummer, unlike many of the other percussionists in the trio, and many critics feel that this was a period of little growth for Evans. After Morell left, Evans and Gomez recorded two duo albums, Intuition and Montreux III. Both I Will Say Goodbye (Evans's last for Fantasy Records) and You Must Believe in Spring (for Warner Bros.) highlighted changes that would become significant in the last stage of Evans career. A greater emphasis was placed on group improvisation and interaction, Evans was reaching new expressive heights in his soloing, and new experiments with harmony and keys were attempted.
Gomez and Zigmund left Evans in 1978 and Evans asked Philly Joe Jones, his old drummer friend from the Miles Davis Sextet days, to fill in. Evans finally settled on Marc Johnson on bass and Joe LaBarbera on drums. This trio was to be Evans's last. Although they released only one record prior to Evans's death in 1980, they recaptured something of the quality of the first trio in their powerful group interactions.
In 1974, Bill Evans recorded a multi-movement jazz concerto specifically written for him by Claus Ogerman entitled "Symbiosis", originally released on the MPS Records label. The 1970's also saw Evans collaborate with the singer Tony Bennett on 1975's The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album and 1977's Together Again.
Chemical dependency
Evans's chemical dependency problems most likely began during his stint with Miles Davis in the late 1950s, and it has been widely reported that Evans felt compelled to compete with other musicians in the usage of drugs. In the late 1970s, cocaine became a serious problem for Evans. His body finally gave out in 1980, when Evans, ravaged by psychoactive drugs, a perforated liver, and a lifelong battle with hepatitis, died in New York City of a bleeding ulcer, cirrhosis of the liver and bronchial pneumonia.
Historical impact
Although the circumstances of his life were often difficult, Evans's music always displayed his creative mastery of harmony, rhythm, and interpretive jazz conception. Evans's work fused jazz elements, a unique conception of ensemble performance and a classical sense of form and conceptual scale in unprecedented ways.
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