Gil Evans - Biography, Discography

Jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, born in Toronto, Ontario, SE Canada. He was principal arranger for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra (1944–8), which led to a collaboration with trumpeter Miles Davis that lasted until 1960. He was one of the first modern jazz arrangers to use electronics and rock influences successfully in combination with the swing and bebop idioms.

Gil Evans (13 May 1912 – 20 March 1988) was a jazz musician and an important innovator of big band jazz in the United States as an arranger, composer, bandleader, and pianist. He had a seminal role in the development of cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz and jazz-rock.

Biography

Gil Evans was born in Toronto, Canada, as Ian Ernest Gilmore Green and early took the family name Evans from his stepfather. With Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan and others Evans collaborated on a band book for a nonet starting in 1948, which had a booking for a week's appearance at the "Royal Roost" as an intermission group on the bill with the Count Basie Orchestra.

Later, when Davis was under contract to Columbia Records producer George Avakian suggested several potential arrangers to the trumpeter who immediately fixed on the option of working with Evans again. Although these four records were marketed primarily under the name of Davis (often credited as Miles Davis and the Gil Evans Big Band) Evans's contribution was just as important. All these collaborations feature Evans's big-band arrangements, onto which Davis played with extraordinary melodic and stylistic skill. Evans also contributed behind-the-scenes help to Davis' classic quintet albums of the 1960s.

From 1957 onwards Evans recorded under his own name too, e.g. his impressionant albums Big Stuff (1957, aka Gil Evans & In the 1970s, following Davis and many other jazz musicians, Evans worked in the free jazz and jazz-rock idioms, gaining a new generation of admirers. Evans had a particular interest in the work of rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix, and reportedly had a meeting scheduled with him to discuss building a big band around Hendrix, cut short by Hendrix's untimely death in 1970. In 1987, Evans recorded a live CD with Sting featuring big band arrangements of songs by Sting and The Police.

Evans died in 1988 in Cuernavaca, Mexico, the same city in which Charles Mingus had died nine years previously.

Discography

Gil Evans and Ten (1957) ! Verve Jazz Masters 23: Gil Evans (1963–1964) Guitar Forms (1965) (with Kenny Burrell) Look To The Rainbow (1966) (with Astrud Gilberto) Svengali (1973) Plays the Music of Jimi Hendrix (1975) ! 2 (1980) Live at Sweet Basil (1984–1986) Farewell (1986) Bud and Bird (1986) Live at Umbria Jazz: Volume 1 & 2 (1987) 75th Birthday Concert (1987) Paris Blues (1987) (duo with Steve Lacy) Last Session (1987) (with Sting) A Tribute to Gil (1988)