Thank you. This is a nice reading for a late night. Did you know that Bill Evans had Russian roots?

Will have to re-read before posting anything halfway intelligent, but this is a good think-piece.

I never got too into Bill Evans myself; was thinking that maybe you had to "be there."

In a similar vein to Tom Djll's piece, here's a longish piece about Evans that I wrote in 1983 for the Chicago Tribune and a 2004 epilogue to it, both from my book "Jazz In Seach Of Itself" (Yale University Press).

Larry Kart

BILL EVANS [1983]

Today, three years after his death at age fifty-one, pianist Bill Evans arguably remains the most influential jazz musician of our time. A list of pianists who have been shaped by Evans would run for many pages, and his influence was not confined to that instrument. Much of the technical and emotional vocabulary of contemporary jazz stems from Evans--so much so that today’s dominant styles seem inconceivable without him. For one thing, he and his onetime bassist, the late Scott LaFaro, virtually invented the elastic, floating sense of swing that is the norm for so many contemporary rhythm sections; and his oblique, subtle harmonic patterns also are in common use. Indeed, both the breadth and likely length of Evans’s influence on jazz can be compared only to the shadows cast by Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane: a veritable jazz pantheon.

But Armstrong, Parker et al. were major creative figures, while Evans was an essentially minor artist--a charming player, at best, but one whose music was confined to a rather narrow emotional realm whose possibilities he had largely exhausted by the early 1960s. Of course, many musicians and fans would dispute that estimate. But if Evans was the minor artistic figure I believe him to be, the question of how and why he became so influential still remains. And if a limited and, in Evans’s later years, quite formulaic music has shaped the approach of so many other artists, what does that tell us about the state of contemporary jazz?

To answer those questions, one has to look at the shape of Evans career. In 1956, when he made his first recording under his own name, New Jazz Conceptions, Evans had yet to find a personal style, although his blend of Lennie Tristano, Bud Powell, and Horace Silver was quite promising. And much of that promise was fulfilled, particularly on the albums Evans made under the leadership of composer George Russell: Jazz Workshop (some of which was recorded before New Jazz Conceptions) and Jazz in the Space Age. Faced with the challenge of Russell’s harmonically dense, rhythmically adventurous, complexly structured compositions, Evans produced solos that so thoroughly realized the implications of such pieces as “Jack’s Blues, “Dimensions,” and “All About Rosie” that he and Russell seemed to be co-composers. Yet the bristling linear logic of those and other performances from what one might call Evans’s first period proved to be something of a false trail, for his music was about to undergo a profound change.

Joining Miles Davis’s Sextet in April 1958, Evans went on to play a major role in Davis’s Kind of Blue album, bringing to the music a wealth of pastel-like harmonic coloration. Perhaps it was Evans who affected Davis at this point; perhaps it was mutual. But there can be little doubt that the album’s most wistfully ethereal piece, “Blue in Green,” was essentially Evans’s creation. And when the pianist formed his own trio in December 1959 (Evans had left Davis in October 1958; Kind of Blue, recorded in March and April 1959, was a one-shot return to the fold), he left behind the urgent linear drive of his earlier work and continued to work in the Kind of Blue manner, favoring “sprung” rhythms, delicately shaded textures, and a melodic approach in which, so it seemed, as much as possible was implied and little was directly stated. Here he found an ideal partner in LaFaro, whose remarkable technical facility and great lyrical gifts led to the creation of a new kind of piano trio--one in which the orthodox, piano-soloist-with-rhythm concept was virtually abandoned, and any member of the trio could take the lead at any time.

“I’m hoping the trio will grow in the direction of spontaneous improvisation rather than just one guy blowing followed by another guy blowing,” was the way Evans described his goal. But a somewhat different story is told by the four albums that Evans, LaFaro, and drummer Paul Motian made for the Riverside label between 1959 and 1961--Portrait in Jazz, Explorations, Waltz for Debby, and Sunday at the Village Vanguard (the latter two both recorded at that club during a June 1961 engagement). Listening to those recordings in chronological order, one hears an exquisitely tender romanticism subduing all other moods--so much so that the more aggressive 1959 performances (“What Is This Thing Called Love?” and “Autumn Leaves” from Portrait in Jazz) would have sounded unthinkably bold by Evans’s 1961 standards. If “spontaneous improvisation” was the stated goal, with each new recording Evans also moved several steps further into LaFaro and Motian’s lush, fluid textures--diminishing the volume level of his playing and softening its rhythmic profile until the pianist had become an almost ghostly presence, hovering near the pulse to add subtle touches of harmonic and melodic color.

The core of Evans’s legacy, his 1959-’61 performances were, and still are, intoxicating. But in the midst of the delicate, whirling patterns of the Evans-Lafaro-Motian trio, one could detect some potential weak points. From his first recordings, it was clear that Evans had a taste for sentimental pop tunes. (Indeed, the sugar quotient of his own most famous composition, “Waltz for Debby,” is quite high.) Now, Evans’s fondness for such ditties as “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” “Alice in Wonderland,” and (in later days) “People,” “Make Someone Happy,” and “The Love Theme from ‘Spartacus’” is not a sign of weakness in itself. After all, Thelonious Monk and especially Sonny Rollins have chosen to deal with material that was no less sweet and sentimental. But in emotional terms, Evans often seemed to be as much at the mercy of those songs’s hyper-romantic moods as any follower of the Hit Parade--either that or perhaps he believed that he could purify and exalt such music through sufficient applications of subtlety and good taste.

Rollins, on the other hand, could take a campfire ballad like “In a Chapel in the Moonlight” or a mock cowboy song like “Wagon Wheels” and transform their corniness into strength by building into the performance an ironically humorous view of the songs’s sentimentality, not to mention his own (and the entire culture’s) taste for such sentiment. In jazz it’s not just the material but the artist’s attitude toward it that counts. When Rollins got his hands on extremely sentimental tunes, he not only knew just what they were but also was able to express and play with that awareness--thus providing his listeners with a seriocomic venture into emotional realism (for all of us have a residue of sappiness in our souls that must be dealt with from time to time). But when Evans handled “Make Someone Happy” or “What Kind of Fool Am I?” as though they were not sugary kitsch but songs that deserved all the tastefulness he could lavish upon them, he was as close to being emotionally fraudulent as the most cynical, manipulative cocktail lounge virtuoso.

Now, Bill Evans was not in fact such a cynic, if one can judge a man’s state of mind from his music. Instead, he seemed to believe that the genuine prettiness of, say, “When I Fall in Love” was just one step away from the beautiful. And it is this wistful faith, implicit in so much of Evans’s music, that the difference between the “pretty” and the “beautiful” is only a matter of degree that probably accounts for Evans’s vast influence--above and beyond the attractiveness and usefulness of his specific musical techniques.

The period of the initial Evans Trio (1959-’61) also saw the advent of Ornette Coleman, whose music, with its spontaneously varied harmonic patterns and its near-total rejection of anything that might be thought of as pretty, seemed to threaten the very existence of what Evans once referred to as “the song form.” One could argue that Coleman’s music (and that of Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler et al.) was not intended to threaten anything but was merely the music these men wanted and needed to make. But the threat was present nonetheless, especially to those younger artists who had grasped some of the implications of the so-called new music while still feeling unable or unwilling to sever their ties with the song form’s reassuring pleasures.

That is not to suggest that a strict progressivism should apply in jazz or in any art. But radical developments arise only when there are pre-existing tensions--the sense, for instance, that the usefulness of previously prevailing techniques is at or near an end. And while that may not turn out to be the case, once a Coleman or a Coltrane comes along, the decision to continue working within a pre-existing musical mode almost unavoidably becomes a conservative act--a decision to do something and a decision not to do something. So, through no fault of his own, Bill Evans’s music has become one of the means by which almost two generations of jazz musicians have skirted the artistic problems that Coleman and others uncovered, not to mention the solutions they proposed. Reassured by Evans’s music that the song form can live and flourish, his disciples occupy themselves with finding ever more subtle harmonic byways and increasingly more oblique means to float above the pulse. More power to them, one might think, except that the romanticism of Evans’s style cannot be separated from his purely musical techniques. And as his disciples have massaged that romanticism several times over, its inherent weaknesses become more evident.

Consider the album Bill Evans: A Tribute, on which fourteen prominent pianists--including George Shearing, Teddy Wilson, John Lewis, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Richie Bierach, and Joanne Brackeen--are heard in solo performance. The members of the pre-Evans generations fare best, with Lewis’s chaste, tender version of “I’ll Remember April” a particular gem. And there is some strong playing from the first generation of post-Evans figures, particularly Hancock and Corea. But when one gets to the second- and third-generation pianists, especially Brackeen and Andy LaVerne, an odd, curdled hysteria enters the music. Seemingly aware that Evans’s techniques demand a romantic statement of some sort, but unable to find such an impulse within themselves, in its place Brackeen and LaVerne supply a thick, inflated rhetoric--the musical equivalent of a bad pastoral poem in which nymphs and satyrs frolic about, even though both the poet and the culture have ceased to believe in the dream that those mythical beings represent.

Judging by his recordings, it would seem that Evans himself occasionally found that dream equally difficult to inhabit. Consider the performance of Jule Styne’s “People” that appears on his 1975 solo album Alone (Again). A virtually static, mechanically sentimental song, which was found wanting on those counts by no less a judge of popular music than Frank Sinatra, “People” still might have been the basis for an interesting performance if Evans had done something to reshape its structure or to question its abject pathos. But instead he just plays the tune over and over again for more than thirteen minutes--always keeping the nagging melody in the foreground. Now there can be little doubt that Evans was fully in control of this performance; throughout Alone (Again) he is alert and technically secure. So why, then, does he keep hammering away at “People” until the listener wants to scream?

Perhaps Evans was aware for once that he could not purify the mechanical kitsch of such songs, no matter how subtly he embroidered them, and that he therefore decided to let “People” stand on its own and even to emphasize its essential banality. So Evans’s “People” is an awful thing to listen to, a grinding musical torment. But in terms of his entire career it can be read as a momentary, and oddly moving, union of self-awareness and self-disgust--Bill Evans’s pained farewell to a world of sweetness and light that part of him always must have sensed was false.

EPILOGUE (2004)

Second thoughts are called for here, for several reasons. First, Peter Pettinger’s biography of Evans, Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, published in 1998, has brought to light a great deal of information about Evans’s life. Second, some of that information has to do with Evans’s varying patterns of drug use and their possible effects on the music he was making during any given period of his career. Finally, it was not until 1984 that the first two albums by Evans’s final trio (with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbera) were released--a freshet that would be followed by a veritable geyser. Beginning in 1989 with the release in Japan of the eight-CD set Consecration, and followed in 1996 by the six-CD set Turn Out the Stars and in 2000 by the eight-CD set The Last Waltz, some twenty-two hours of music recorded in live performance by Evans in the final year of his life have been made available. And it is the feeling of many of Evans’s admirers that these recordings, particularly the Turn Out The Stars set, constitute a major--perhaps a climactic--development for him.

I don’t agree by and large, but there is no question that the music of Evans’s final trio was an advance over, say, the music Evans was making in the early 1970s, a period during which even the sympathetic Pettinger acknowledges that “Evans…settled for long stretches of meager invention, stringing together stock phrases and motives.” And Pettinger adds that “[t]he methadone which he was taking, with its sedative effect, may have been a contributing factor.” (Methadone is an opium-based substitute for heroin, the drug to which Evans had been addicted since the late 1950s.) It seems fair then to speculate that the driven, harried, feverish quality that crops up on the recordings from Evans’s final year, and that to my mind disturbingly marks the Turn Out The Stars set in particular, was linked to Evans’s late-1970s turn to the stimulant cocaine as his drug of choice.

There are any number of great jazz performances that could be described as driven, harried, and feverish--Bud Powell’s “Un Poco Loco” is one obvious example. But if Powell’s “Un Poco Loco” is driven, harried, etc., it is expressively so--the anguish, if you will, pervades every strand of the musical fabric and is mastered there, or at least exhilaratingly confronted, in the terms of Powell’s art. But the latter-day Evans often sounds like a man on the run (and not only because of his longstanding tendency to rush), strewing forth pianistic “gems” in an attempt to distract or evade pursuers. This is, again to my mind, especially true of the four lengthy and much-vaunted performances of Miles Davis’s “Nardis” on Turn Out The Stars. While the harmonic virtuosity of Evans’s playing on the five-minute-or-so solo passages that begin each of those performances is undeniable in one sense, it finally seems more fidgety than reflective (a series of paths that either lead nowhere in particular or back to the place where Evans started). Questions also arise--as I think they do in most of Evans’s music after the death of Scott LaFaro in 1961--about how genuinely lyrical this supposedly quintessential jazz lyricist actually was.

“One extremely striking aspect of the Evans approach…is his strong melodic sense,” wrote Orrin Keepnews in the liner notes to Evans’s 1958 album Everybody Digs Bill Evans. “Bill is fundamentally a lyrical pianist, a ‘pretty’ player in the best meaning of that word.…. This strong melodic sense is also very much in evidence on ‘up’ numbers.” The performances on Everybody Digs support that view, especially “Tenderly,” which seems to have been conceived as a single melodic strand and which concludes with a thrilling passage in which the pianist rushes upwards toward what we sense must be his ultimate melodic goal and is thrown back no less than five times, only to ascend triumphantly on his sixth and final attempt. One suspects that this performance involved a good deal of pre-planning, but even if it did not, the adventure of Evans’s melodic impulse literally enacts a confrontation between ecstasy and restraint, as he gives us a line that “desires” a release, is repeatedly blocked, and then magically overleaps the barrier.

Increasingly, however, Evans was constructing what Pettinger rightly describes as an “essentially harmonic world.” On “I Wish I Knew” from the 1961 album Explorations, Pettinger notes “the large-scale substitution…of new harmonies for the songbook changes. The… songsheet made do with half a dozen or so basic chords. Evans’s reconstruction…employed nearly three times as many, changing mostly by the half bar. In this way a simple song could be enriched, strengthened, and transformed.”

Transformed, yes--enriched and strengthened, perhaps not. A more or less simple popular song that also is a good one has a certain organic unity--a working balance between its harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic components. Alter that balance by a “large-scale substitution of new harmonies,” and do the components of the song remain in balance? And if not, what can done about this? As it happens, on “I Wish I Knew,” Evans has a good answer: He adds to the mix, as Pettinger says, “the infinite shades of his tone production,” thus nudging the song’s melodic and rhythmic components into the same realm of luxuriant ambiguity that his substitute harmonies already occupied. And it this balance (as I wrote in 1983) that worked so well for him up through the death of LaFaro, as Evans “moved several steps further into LaFaro and [Paul] Motian’s lush, fluid textures--diminishing the volume level of his playing and softening its rhythmic profile….”

What was increasingly at stake in Evans’s music of this period, was the pianist’s acute sensitivity--musical and otherwise. One thinks of the emotional buffeting he reportedly received from some audiences and fellow band members because he was the only non-African-American member of the Miles Davis Sextet and of his resulting “determination,” says Pettinger, “not to isolate himself from the [band’s] drug-grounded fellowship. In fact, not content with being a mere addict, he was determined to be the worst junkie in the band.” Evans’s companion of the time, Peri Cousins, adds: “I have a theory about his addiction. When … he kicked it, which he did on numerous occasions, the world was…too beautiful [for him]. It’s almost as if he had to blur the world for himself by being strung out.”

Quite articulate about his music, in a 1964 interview Evans said this: “The only way I can work is to have some kind of restraint involved, the challenge of a certain craft or form and then to find the freedom in that…. I think a lot of guys…want to circumvent that kind of labor….” Then there is this Evans statement: “I believe that all music is romantic, but if it gets schmaltzy, romanticism is disturbing. On the other hand, romanticism handled with discipline is the most beautiful kind of beauty.”

Plausible words, perhaps, but the value that Evans seemingly places on restraint in itself leads one to ask, What is being restrained and why? Evans’s “challenge of [working within] a certain craft or form” is not merely an account of his own necessary practice; it lends to that practice an aura of moral virtue (“I think a lot of guys …want to circumvent that kind of labor….”). In other words, for Evans certain sorts of musical labor are not only valid but they also validate. And should an aesthetically valid outcome be reached in a seemingly non-laborious manner, that can be disturbing. Thus in 1964 , after acknowledging that the brilliant, lucid, and “completely unpremeditated” two-piano improvisation that he and Paul Bley played on George Russell’s 1960 album Jazz In The Space Age “was fun to do,” Evans says: “[But to] do something that hadn’t been rehearsed successfully, just like that, almost shows the lack of challenge involved in that kind of freedom.”

Drawing a comparison between Bach and César Franck in his Man and His Music: Romanticism and the Twentieth Century, Wilfrid Mellers refers to the “tension [in Bach’s music] between linear independence and the dramatic logic of harmony.” In early Evans, as in Bach, that tension was alive, rich and fruitful; in much later Evans, as in much Franck, logical and increasingly elaborate harmonic labor seemingly exists to curtail, if not defeat, linear melodic independence. (Pettinger says of Evans’s 1966 composition “Unless It’s You”--and the same could be said of many latter-day Evans improvisations--“…[T] he interest was mostly harmonic …, the significance of almost every note [of the top line] dependent on its attached harmony.” )

One thinks again of Evans’s recording of “Tenderly,” with its dramatized joust between restraint and the desire to break way from it, of Evans’s actute sensitivities, and of his apparent attempt to damp them down after the death of his uncannily empathetic musical partner Scott LaFaro. In 1983 I began by referring to Bill Evans as a minor artist. What I would say now is that Evans was an artist whose conflicts threatened to overwhelm his gifts, and that it was his fate to spend much of the latter part of his career making a music in which those conflicts were in effect disguised, even denied.

Thanks, Larry -- wish I'd known about your piece before I posted. But, as I say, mine's an "appreciation" of Evans (and just a small slice of his work), meaning less a full-on scholarly takedown than a personal reflection. I didn't even plan on writing it, it just sort of happened over a long child-free weekend.

Thanks again, Tom, for this piece. And thanks to Larry too for generously posting his essay here in the comments (an unexpected pleasure & honor to host his words).

I’ve long considered myself an Evans fan, but deep down feel less than worthy of the designation given that I don’t find myself pulling his albums from the rack too often. That said, the latest VV box is a definite improvement over past editions (I’m thinking specifically of the single disc releases & the Riverside box) w/ LaFaro in particular benefiting from the updated mastering. I’ve only taken maybe a half dozen full tours through the set, but that’s mainly due to time contraints and a unending docket of distractions. The denuding criticisms levied here make sense and are well supported, but the paragraph that sticks in my craw is the one below:

To sum up: Bill Evans was a great pianist and brought some important new things to the music. He made some great records, too, but the Village Vanguard sessions aren’t among them. They’re unfocussed, insignificant, and boring. It’s a case of over-rating one day’s work – at the expense of a man’s entire career.

Evans was & remains one of the most egregious beneficiaries/victims of the hype-machine, I'd agree, but the avalanche of encomiums that continues to cascade on his name still contains numerous kernels of accurately-assessed praise, the Village Vanguard stand among them.

Evans skeptics should also check out Duck Baker's negative assessment of the (1961) Vanguard box in the Jan/Feb 06 Coda, by the way.

I wish I could find my tape of a CBC interview with Gavin Bryars (from a show done by Jeff Reilly) where he talks at length about his love for this recording, & in particular for the uncanny, unearthly-slow "My Foolish Heart" (I remember his remarking on how Motian's cymbals seem just to hang in the air, out-of-time).

The real question, I suppose, is why Evans became such a huge & mostly baleful influence in modern jazz piano, to the point where if you're not playing avantgarde piano then you're almost automatically playing Evans-style piano. It's like some massive faultline, where everything outside Evans is simply not "mainstream piano" at all. You can sound brilliant and original simply by having the daring to model yourself on Herbie Nichols, Randy Weston, Hill or Monk. I'm an admirer of Evans' earlier work (never got much out of the later stuff--can't even really warm to the late trio recordings with Johnson & LaBarbara), but find his extensive impact on later pianists rather depressing, with some notable exceptions (Fred Hersch and Michel Petrucciani for instance).

my favorite b.e. is is to be found in the recordings he made with the george russell jazz workshops. he sounds almost joyful, or at least exuberant, on pieces like "concerto for billy the kid", heavily indebted as his playing is to tristano at this stage in his career. occasionally evans does recapture that feeling of, well, swing, but it could be in those cases i'm mistaking virtuoso drumming (philly joe, dejohnette on the montreaux material) for exceptional piano improvising.

so what happened to that guy? i'm not sure any biography, no matter how skillfully done, will ever answer that question.

as for what accounts for evans' influence... he's easier to reverse engineer and teach than monk, or nichols, or hill, or name your favorite idiosyncratic pianist here.

“You wanna live out your life playing intermissions at pie-eating contests?”

Sounds like an alright life to me, who doesn't love pie.

I'm in agreement with Nate -- the question is, how the heck did the Evans piano paradigm get to be so dominant? (there's a pun there, of course, but I'm not touching it)

He's pretty dominant, but again, one has to mash him up with McCoy, Herbie Hancock and Chick. I'd throw Jarrett in there too, but one doesn't hear his influence as much on post-70s pianists.

It's not ALL Bill Evans.

Do check out Bill's last trio with drummer Joe LaBarbera. I think it's interesting that you conjecture that his playing with LaFaro was sedated by heroin; in that last group he was apparently energized by the coke that would kill him.

(I made essentially the same comment over at be.jazz, from whence I was directed here, but I figure why not make it again?)

I don't know, I was pretty disappointed by how jittery & sped-up the playing was on the Turn Out the Stars set--I guess it's a good set for people who don't like the sedate(d) balladic side of Evans! I actually like the Keystone Korner box a bit more--the piano's not so harshly in-your-face &, well, I guess knowing the end was in sight adds extra poignance. (More varied repertoire, too.) Haven't heard the 1979 Paris concerts though, which I'm told are some of the best work by that group (Clark Coolidge even remarks on the "Nardis" there in "Listener's Reach", I recall).

About why Evans's style became so dominant, here's the passage from my book that precedes those two pieces about Evans I posted above. It's my best guess:

This piece about pianist Bill Evans and the five that follow--about pianist Keith Jarrett, vibraphonist Gary Burton, guitarist Pat Metheny, and rock guitarist/composer Frank Zappa--all touch upon what might be called the pastoral reaction or, if one were in an unkind mood, the pastoral evasion in jazz. What was being reacted to were several interrelated late 1950s’s phenomena: The state of the Broadway show tune tradition, which had provided jazz with so much of its basic material but which had come to be threatened from within and without; the rise of rock ‘n’ roll, a music that not only was at odds with Broadway-style romance and sophistication but also made it unlikely that jazz ever again would be the broadly popular “youth” music it once had been; and the advent of a full-fledged jazz avant garde, a music that implicitly disrupted jazz’s norms of craft professionalism and seemed likely to alienate a significant portion of the jazz audience. Matters of the marketplace are involved here, of course, but matters of the spirit underlie and perhaps override them. For instance, Evans’s desire to defend “song form,” referred to below, was based not only on his longstanding genuine affection for the forms and moods of the Broadway show tune but also on his sense that this musical-emotional world, with all its attractive, familiar, and useful habits, was now on the wane or even under attack . Thus the possibility of the pastoral almost inevitably arose, as part of the actual or imagined artistic past came to be regarded as a place of potential refuge, a realm from which a defense of the threatened “beautiful” could perhaps be mounted.

P.S. to the above:

Apaprently a lot of other players of Evans' time, and then coming along in his wake, felt much the same way for much the ame reasons. Also, of course, for those in his wake, there was the seductive fact of his own music, with all its readily adaptable formulas (readily adaptable if one was prepared to "master" one's instrument in a certain arguably limited manner). In that last respect there's an obvious parallel in the wave after wave of Coltrane clones -- especially those who've feed on the codes of "Giant Steps." BTW, it's interesting how much of an influence Evans had over older black players who already had forged strong personal styles -- Hampton Hawes and Kenny Drew, for example.

An excellent pair of takes; thnks to both Tom and Larry. Sort of a cross between "The emperor has no clothes" and "He may have opened the door, but he wouldn't cross the threshold himself".

As a bassist, the LATVV session impact on me had much more to do with the bass playing than the piano or drum playing. Who can honestly say why Evans chose that rhythm section, what his motivations were?

Tom, I especially related to the first part of your piece, dealing with disdainful, snobby teachers. In my opinion, the dogmatic approach based upon personal preferences rather than examination of historical context has done much damage to jazz. My improv teacher in college was the same way: humorless, openly disparaging of anything that didn't fit his myopic views, and deliberately insulting. Worse, he adored John Coltrane and gave me "Live In Seattle" as a good example. Can you imagine the effect that had on an impressionable teenager? I hated Coltrane for years behind this!

More people would enjoy jazz (or paintings, sculpture, classical music, etc.) if they felt safe in their enjoyment, instead of the fear of ridicule from experienced listeners and fans (and musicians for that matter). Perhaps Keepnews was right. There's a tangible reason why jazz isn't as popular as it once was.

I agree with the teacher's opinion. You're a dimbulb.

Amazing how several thousand words of honest, soul-searching critique can get dismissed by some jerk who can't formulate a response longer than two sentences.

*

Hey, I love Live in Seattle! But, yeah, that teacher must have had no perspective on the subject of his adoration if he thought that was an ideal intro to Coltrane. I guess thank your stars he didn't choose Om for you instead....

I didn't think he was all that great a teacher, at the time or now. Why do so many music teachers insist on being dour, opinionated, grumpy jerks? If they're so irritated by the students, they should find another line of work.

I do music seminars in schools, and encourage students to bring in their favorite CDs. Many times I've been enlightened; at the very least I discover what kids today are listening to. This practice gives me more credibility when I turn them onto something--if I can sit and listen appreciately to their songs, it makes it easier for them to pay attention to mine.

One time a student came running into the classroom, all excited: "Skip, ya gotta listen to this guitar player, he's awesome! I mean it, check him out!" So he hands me the CD and I look to see who is this raw talent to whom I'm being introcduced. It was Jimi Hendrix.

"Amazing how several thousand words of honest, soul-searching critique can get dismissed by some jerk who can't formulate a response longer than two sentences."

I wrote something similar to this once. Let's see, why did I do that?
Here is reads like the punchline to a very long but hilarious joke.

Joe--get the fuck off my back. Now. I don't mind you giving me flak concerning what I write or say about you in pertinent threads--it's fair game--but at this point you seem incapable of watching me post anything without eventually starting up the same old tune. If you have something of interest to say about Bill Evans or Tom Djll, fine, say it, or for that matter about what I posted on this thread concerning Evans. But peppering the site with jabs at me of a continual, carefully-nursed sense of spite is truly pathetic.

Oh jeez...

It's not Joe, it's JOSEPH, darling.. BTW Nate are you a Nathan or a Nathaniel? Before this stupid fucking bunfight starts up YET AGAIN, haggle between yourselves - you know each other's respective email addresses, and unless you've got anything pertinent to add to what was an intelligent discussion of a fine article by a good writer, do us all a big favour and please stay away.

Hey Dan--Nathaniel, but I never use it.

I'm just as happy for ye olde Morris bunfight to be removed from this thread, but I'm not especially interested in pursuing it via email either. It's been, er, done to death. I'm just getting tired of its cropping up on totally irrelevant threads simply because Morris spots my name there.

What you mind or don't mind is not my concern. I don't need your approval about what is relevant and neither does Mike C or anyone else. I read this whole thread. Mike C's comment was a valid opinion and you called him a jerk.
I just pointed out that you called him a jerk for doing exactly what you yourself have done. If you were a bit more careful, and considerate about what you write it wouldn't be so easy for me to call you on it.
You're getting paranoid about me watching you and that's just weird.

"(*About the heroin thing. Evans was arguably in the worst throes of his habit at the time he recorded at the Vanguard in 1961. Is it unrefined to mention this, in connection with the heavy-lidded aura of the music? Here’s Gopnik on that subject: “It is … sadly possible that the dreamy, otherworldly quality of Evans's playing that day had something to do with what was flowing in his veins.”)

well that sounds informed, we can just look at the slow dreamy music charlie parker made, or for that matter the soft lounge music of kurt cobain.

bill evans is a genius. I was happy to see otomo pcik undercurrent as hos last day on earth album in the wire a while back.

"(*About the heroin thing. Evans was arguably in the worst throes of his habit at the time he recorded at the Vanguard in 1961. Is it unrefined to mention this, in connection with the heavy-lidded aura of the music? Here’s Gopnik on that subject: “It is … sadly possible that the dreamy, otherworldly quality of Evans's playing that day had something to do with what was flowing in his veins.”)

well that sounds informed, we can just look at the slow dreamy music charlie parker made, or for that matter the soft lounge music of kurt cobain.

bill evans is a genius. I was happy to see otomo pick undercurrent as his last day on earth album in the wire a while back.

"Genius" means just about anything anybody wants it to mean anymore. Like food that says "natural."

About the heroin thing. It is possible that drugs have nothing to do with what musicians produce. Then again, the aggregate of evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Also, re Parker: same drug, different man, different body, different effect.

thats my point about drugs and an individual and why it is not a very valid observation about why that music might be the way it is. Also because of lafaro, who is my least favorite evans bass player, I dont think that set is particularly languid or cloudy compared to other evans work. I think evans own repuation has been hurt by lounge players across the land watering down his style, coltranes has never seemed to be hurt by his many imitators.

SWS -- I'm talking about the intersection of a very insecure, shy, self-effacing intellectual and a drug that's known to cause sleepiness and a lack of urgency.

But the drug thing is a minor point. The main point of my article is to de-hype the Village Vanguard sessions.

man i can't wait for the joe morris / nathaniel dorward slapfight at the next no fun festival.

djll:

fwiw, Lowell Davidson (who worked with Ornette and recorded with Milford and Peacock on ESP ) was a huge fan of Evans, especially the VV recordings. I think it was the very "down" feel that he liked, as well as the virtuosity of course. Most of Lowell's playing had a similar feel. (He was not into heroin). Lowell was always talking about keeping the "daylight" out of his music. I know that he felt that the slow and dark aspects of Evans' music really pushed the aesthetic envelope.

Too bad you didn't hook up with Lowell while you were in Boston. You might have been able get a different perspective than what they gave you at Berklee.

John Voigt, the bassist, who worked with Lowell for decades actually built the library at Berklee and ran it until about 5 years ago. I know he has the same feeling about Evans.

"... he felt that the slow and dark aspects of Evans' music really pushed the aesthetic envelope."

Joseph -- believe me, I've tried listening to Evans's Vanguard sessions as a species of "reductionism" that flowered and died before the environment was ready to support it and pass on the genes. It's an interesting thesis, and I don't mean that dismissively. How would you interpret/support what Davidson said?

I think from Lowell's perspective it was a more mystical version of cool. Transendent cool. I guess the simple way of saying it is that the Evans model from the Lowell PoV is as an archetype for a "down" vibe that leads to a poetic sound space.

It was the 60's. Most of the jazz guys were way out front of the hippies in the use of psychedelic drugs or at least a transendent mindset. All of those players were looking for a way to express what that did to them. I think musicians like Lowell were seeking a way to get out of being "entertaining" and trying to find new avenues of expression. Jazz was the way to do that before it became codified by idiot critics and bad teachers. (Hey, to me it still is, and the fight is exactly the same) But just like today musicians were always trying to find a format that would allow them to be able to play. Just like today, some folks have the will but not the chops. (Lowell had plenty of chops, but he didn't like a lot of notes. He liked the sounds to ring out until all of the partials decayed). From Lowell's avant garde PoV Evans was an example of high artistry rendered in the "down" and cool zone. It's possible to improvise freely in that way. (I'm not talking about Evans' use of harmony or his virtousity, that's really hard and maybe why his style became a kind of technical imperative). I'l talking about the "vibe", the tempo, the faux classical if not the classical. You don't have to be flashy, and if you do that it will be at least be kind of poetic. Maybe part of it was corny, or too romantic, or sappy, but guys like Lowell, took out the sappy part and used it for the way it moved in time and how the sounds rang out, and because it offered a version of high art that was underground. The only place where a guy like Lowell was ever going to get any credit for his creativity. Way underground.

Bley and Glenn Gould also influenced him, but that's a different story, maybe.

I think there certainly are some positive influences that Evans has had, it's just that the diffusion of influence over the years has caused problems.

I'd bring up players like Howard Riley and Bernardo Sassetti as other pianists who take the Evans model and run in some interesting (=valuable, not mere) directions with it.

Geez, seems like much ado about nothing.

"Bill Evans was at that time the summation of everything that was ever worthwhile doing with a piano or a piano trio. Forget Monk – not really a piano player; didn’t he write some quirky tunes? – forget Hines and Tatum – hopelessly old-fashioned, heavy-handed stuff – who? Cecil Taylor? Get out of my sight, infidel."

It's sad if that's the line your teacher was laying on you, but hell, music schools like Berklee aren't known as bastions of enlightenment. For the most part they exist to produce "professionals;" creativity and originality come a few notches down the rung.

Regardless, your teacher's cranky dismissal of your approach doesn't really have anything to do with Evans. I don't think the Vanguard dates--early or late--are overrated. Overly written about, maybe, and overly praised by people with agendas (Keepnews) or who just don't have bigger minds. Whatever. Evans is as a great and original as any jazz pianist save perhaps Monk. Contrarianism is cool, and boards like this thrive on it, but I for one am not buying it. Which doesn't mean I didn't enjoy reading your piece.

Bye-ya

"Evans is as a great and original as any jazz pianist save perhaps Monk"
I dont think Evans is as original as Cecil Taylor either(does anyone?!)...and how can Evans be as original as any pianist but Monk, yet be more original than Cecil Taylor(to my mind more radical than Monk)?
Excellent Article.

Evans is only not as original as Taylor to those who think melodicism is somehow a lesser form of or approach to expression--someone above even called his music "pastoral," which makes no sense at all--a way of thinking that seems endemic to fans of the "outside." Taylor is certainly an original and a major force, but I'll defer from considering him alone on the mount. Melodic improvisers such as Bley, Jarrett, and yes, Evans, are right there with him. Few around here will agree, I guess. But then, some people think Charles Gayle has something to say on the piano...'Nuff said.

I think Charles Gayle has something to say on piano. Et alors? I also happen to be a huge Bill Evans fan, and agree with your point on melodic improvisers. But I'm a bit alarmed by the need (you're not alone Gary in expressing this) to place people on pedestals according to "originality".. X is "better" than Y because he's "more original". Who decides what constitutes originality, anyway? FWIW, if you put a gun to my temple and forced me to choose between Unit Structures and Evans' Live at the Vanguard, I think I'd take the Evans.

Count me as another believer in the proselytizing powers of Gayle’s piano, his recent Time Zones on Tompkins Square proves this, I think. Paul, I’m pretty sure I can guess, but what’s your beef with his particular brand of ivory-tickling.

Sorry to admit that Tom Djll's writing is new to me and I thought I was keeping up on everything Evans. The very fact the Evans' music provokes so much thought (and sometimes thoughtful words) sustains the notion that he in indeed an influential giant to those who attempt to play jazz piano and to all instrumentalists who endeavor to create jazz music with more complexity than simple stream of consciousness playing.

I was a late-in-life Evans convert (mid-thirties). It took a while to develop the mental attention span to hear what was going on in Bill's music. I started with the rather bland days of Chuck Israels on bass period which was not a very adventuresome time for Bill, then came through Gomez and Marc Johnson, then back to LaFaro before the totality of Bill's musical contributions to the human experience became apparent. Now, (probably due to taking a lot of anti-depression drugs) I often come to tears when listening to the music, especially Bill playing his own tunes, like "RE: Person I Knew" and "Turn Out The Stars." The LaFaro period is Bill at his most experimental and LaFaro is equally responsible for what is going on, perhaps even more so than Bill. While recently listening to the "Milestones" track I got the impression that Bill truly recognized the new power released into his music, namely the unsuppressed LaFaro and was probably having a few second thoughts about the new partnership.

I have the small piece of audio where Bill and Scotty are rehearsing on a bad piano in a bar somewhere in upstate NY with a football game between the Houston Oilers (of the long defunct American Football League) and some team on a TV or radio while Scotty adjust the recording level, playing a few notes on bass (as well as piano) on his wire recorder. In the next segment Bill is heard warming up on the instrument and they launch into "My Foolish Heart" each laying down his own version of bass/chord harmonic approach through the path of the tune, discussing (not arguing) which direction has the most merit and why. Then the 20 minute "wire" ran out.

In a lot of ways LaFaro became part of Bill Evans and the duality of sweet sentimentality and harmonic complexity while "marching to a different drummer" in experimenting with both time and harmonic displacement in a floating, mutating stream that was the beginning and essence of the conversational jazz trio style, which no one since has even come close to duplicating at the same level. Piano playing aside, Bill Evans is unique for developing this musical treatment and level of like-mindedness, stretching the boundaries of a tune, in a mainstream way. And, once you listen to the man, the piano playing simply cannot be put aside.

I have an old site here-

http://www.selu.edu/34skid

and have done some newer things here-

http://www2.selu.edu/orgs/34skid/BEJF4/Clear_Day/

(URL is case sensitive as server is is old academic UNIX system)

For better or worse, Bill Evans will be a part of me till I die and I am very happy to have him there.

--
Winson (Win) Hinkle
Double Bass, Bass Guitar
bighinx@gmail.com
(240) 643 3981

http://www2.selu.edu/orgs/34skid/BEJF4/Clear_Day/
This article is meant as a starting point for someone who wants to include the tune in the repetoir and has a lot of non-jazz information. Jump down to the last 2 links at the bottom of the page for a usful tool to check out the tune.

Dan, I'm not a huge fan of such hierarchies either. I was just reacting to what I perceive as way of thinking in much "avant" writing that melodic players such as Evans are inferior or less innovative than supposedly more difficult players such as Taylor. And Win, a very nice post.

Win Hinkle States:

"In a lot of ways LaFaro became part of Bill Evans and the duality of sweet sentimentality and harmonic complexity while "marching to a different drummer" in experimenting with both time and harmonic displacement in a floating, mutating stream that was the beginning and essence of the conversational jazz trio style, which no one since has even come close to duplicating at the same level."

Win
you might want to check out a Paul Bley record called "The Floater" that I think was recorded in 1965? and a contemporary of Evans which features Paul Bley , Pete Laroca and Steve Swallow. Very high level Interplay that never quite got the recognition it deserved. I think it's been re-released on CD. I think you would like it.

Could you send a URL for this disc, Alden? (It dates from 62 btw) Would be much obliged. Just browsing around I see there's no good Bley discography online. Or have I missed one?

Yes, Bley is a pianist who picked up some of the strands of what Evans was doing and often made more interesting music..

There’s a 1990 cd two-fer that combines The Floater w/ it’s companion Syndrome under the weirdly conjunctive title The Floater Syndrome. Particulars below. I have a copy currently buried in a box here at Rancho de Taylor, but I’d second Alden’s rec. I think Footloose!, another Savoy reissued on cd by Denon, covers some of the same material.

1. When Will These Blues Leave (Coleman) (6:07)
2. Floater (C. Bley) (6:28)
3. Stereophrenic (D. Baker) (5:06)
4. The Circle With the Hole in the Middle (Coleman) (5:08)
5. Around Again (C. Bley) (4:07)
6. Syndrome (C. Bley) (7:09)
7. Cousins (P. Bley) (4:40)
8. King Korn (C. Bley) (3:59)
9. Vashkar (C. Bley) (4:06)
10. Ballad No. 1 (P. Bley) (4:29)
11. Ballad No. 2 (P. Bley) (3:47)
12. Ballad No. 4 (P. Bley) (4:50)
13. Turns (P. Bley) (3:15)
14. Around Again (C. Bley) (3:53)
15. King Korn (alt.) (4:17)

Bley- piano; Steve Swallow- bass; Pete LaRoca- drums. Recorded: 8/17/62 (1-5) and 9/12/63 (6-15), Medallion Studios, Newark, NJ.

Evans and Bley play together on 2 pianos on Ge0rge Russells "Jazz in the Space age" by the way. And Evans is more "far out" than Bley on that one strange enough.....

A really great cd (1960 I think)

Cor

I've already commented elsewhere on Larry Kart's fine (and very fun to read) book, but I want to congratulate Tom D for his excellent piece here too.

FWIW, my own take on Evans has always been similarly ho-hum. Good with voicings and touch, and, obviously, very influential--to the good with some (like Geri Allen), but maybe not so good with others (like Mat Shipp), but not my cup of tea.

I'll take any one of my T guys (Tatum, Taylor, Tilbury, etc.) any day of the week.

RE: Paul Bley LP "The Floater"
Info is below.
I like Paul's stuff. Heard him live in NYC with Jimmy Giufree while sitting next to Richie Beirach in the audience. Also have one of his books. I am not particularly fond of Carla Bley's music, except her humor. The tune "Floater" is Carla's tune.

Cannot find "The Floater" available anywhere. Anyone know of an MP3?

Paul Bley Trio: Floater
17 August 1962, Savoy LP MG 12182
Features the Carla Bley compositions "Floater," "Around Again," "Syndrome," "King Korn," and "Vashkar." These compositions are published by ALRAC Music, BMI. The issue of these recordings is not clearly confirmed by the later Savoy re-releases, Lord's database, or Paul Bley's memoir. Likely this also includes a session date of September 12, 1963. Dates are session dates.

RE: Paul Bley, who appears on a few tracks on "Darn It!" - Paul Haines' masterpiece is being re-issued on American Clave sometime soon [don't have details in front of me]. Grab it before they start selling this at a net auction house soon!

If you wanted to hear a tune -- just one or two choruses that established the melody -- who would you want to hear play it? I'd choose Bill Evans every time.

Jay - what were the options to pick from?

Duke Jordan? Al Haig? Teddy Wilson? The list goes on and on.

Earl Hines. Is. The. Greatest. Ever.

Dear Tom,

Was just alerted to your Evans piece by Jan Stevens of Billevanswebpages fame.

I taught one summer at berkelee, subbing for John laPorta in 1962. I was given improv classes to teach and students showed up to the class not knowing the basic fingerings for their horns let alone what a major scale was!! The tunnell vision of the administration is equal to the narrow mindness of your piano teacher.
My love of Evans is in his compositions. For me therein lies his true legacy. My book, "THE HARMONY of BILL EVANS" will back me up.

Thanks for your thoughts.

With respect,

Jack Reilly.

Jack,

What danger level is the alert at Billevanswebpages?

Just kidding. Thanks for your thoughts - td

"Earl Hines. Is. The. Greatest. Ever."

Certainly at the top level (though not IMO alone there) but not I think the pianist for the task that Jay outlined above: "If you wanted to hear a tune -- just one or two choruses that established the melody..." Hines typically makes any tune all his from the first, or if the early choruses are relatively plain, they are suffused with expressive tension by our (and his) foreknowledge of the bravura structures he's going to build on that base.

Billy motherfucking Joel

hey everyone, really interesting stuff.
been through a lot of articles about evans through surching about paul motian interviews, and he seems to be more keen over the portraits in jazz and explorations material than on the vv.
here is a link to an interview where he talks a bit of the evans trio days http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5256495
Win, i'd sure love to hear that trio too, i'm a great fan of paul bley, mostly the sixties and early seventies stuff, like the ballads records on ecm with peacock and altschul.
a pîty you don't like carla bley, i think the escalator years (tropic appetites and silence) were really interesting.

jesus - does anyone on this thread actually LISTEN to music, or is music merely an object for consideration & analysis that facilitates the spew of your pedantic & vaunted opinions? basically this entire thread is testament to the utter uselessness of writing words about music, regardless of where you come down on Bill Evans, pro or con. this is doubly ironic given the Orrin Keepnews quote which begins it, the one about "jazz criticism" being "a bad idea, poorly executed." the issue of cultural or stylistic bias is not clarified by all this nonsense, it's further obfuscated. case in point: is a predilection for Fats Waller any different than one for Bill Evans? it's easy to lash out at the teacher for his myopic views, but is the single-minded pursuit of learning to play like Fats Waller coupled w/ the childish assumption that Fats Waller IS JAZZ any less so? do any of you who are actual musicians let the people who write all these meaningless words about music determine for you what music means to you? do you let critics decide what is good & what is not? the lack of openess, the seeming inability here to accept that maybe Cecil Taylor & Bill Evans BOTH have something to say - the idea that what is in fact the individualistic pursuit of personal expression can only be understood through the prism of an imposed stylistic competition, & that said competition is a zero-sum game (i.e., "there can be only one!") is seriously disturbing.

by far the most disturbing commentary comes from Larry Kart, however. i have no idea who he is, & i don't want to know. what i do know is this - to judge someone's music because it changes through different periods, or because it defies one's expectations of what it was or what it could be or what it should be is to completely misunderstand the nature of human expression. i can't think of anything more miserable for someone who obviously has so much to say about art.

Well, Fats Waller is jazz, as far as I know.

Whoever "wbb" is, I don't think s/he gets it, and I don't think enough of his/her post to respond with anything more.

Thank You "wbb" for voicing so elequently and adeptly what I was thinking about this list of sanctimonious, musical tripe.

The merits of a piece or style of music are entirely subjective, based on who we are and where our emotional centre lies. We vary in our opinions and in our tastes and thus there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to musical opinion.

What a nerve you people have, thinking that your taste and opinion is the be and end all, coating your argument in hyperbolic, pedantic nonsense to try and make your opinion seem more worthy of someone's attention than another.

I'd love to say that heavy metal is not music, that it's utter rubbish, supporting it with a wealth of critiscm about it's structure and "lack of musical depth", but some people adore it in the same way that we adore Jazz, so who are we to judge.

I'm sure that "djll" will say that I "don't get it" (beacause I guess that I'm just not as important or intelligent as him, isn't that righ? How bloody condesending!) and decide that he's going to ignore my opinion like a petulant little child, much the same way that he discredited "wbb"'s opinion, but perhaps if he simply acknowleged that Bill Evan's is a great jazz pianist, maybe not to him but to others then it would go some way to explaining why so many musicians are inspired and influenced by his style. Either that or he could just ignore them and say that they "just don't get it".

I've been reading the various posts regarding Bill Evans. I met him when I was playing at the Top of The Gate on Mondays in the mid 60's w/a great singer named Stan Edwards. What makes Bill so great was his ability to wear every emotion openly in his playing. He did'nt "I'm a cool cat, hey man" everything. There was a depth of feeling that nobody in jazz has come close with the way he projected. Bill could take the most mundane song & give it life. It's a shame that I have to pester WBGO & WKCR to play, and even god forbid, have a birthday celebration of Bill. Marsalis et al have given jazz such a narrow focus. Jazz is a fruit to be savored by all who partake. America's true hybrid-African rhythms, Western European harmonies and instruments, and so forth. To this pianist, there are 3 wellsprings of jazz piano-Art Tatum, Bud Powell, and Bill Evans. He was a most approachable person, and shared ideas with me that I still use today. All I know is, that I can be in traffic w/all of the noise, and 1 chord played by Bill will reach me and grab my attention like no other player. There's too much banging and noise in jazz today. Remember Bill Evans-MUSICAL CIVILITY SURVIVES HERE.
Thank goodness for people like Win Hinckle.

I don't see how you can say all this stuff about Bill Evans - the man was a genious and he will forever be looked upon as one by all musicians, regardless of their musical taste. He came before Keith Jarrett, before many of the great pianists today - heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Herbie learned a few things from Bill Evans. You dismiss him so easily as someone who has been over praised without due accord - the problem being he has earned his druthers, and many of the things orrin k. has said about him rings true. He is a wonderfully lyrical and emotional player. It's ok that you are into Jelly Roll, and it's ok that you don't like Bill Evans, but don't insult him and play down what he's done for jazz. Some kid from New Mexico really has no right to do that.

Good for you, Nick.

Bill Evans was a monumental and beautiful influence on jazz piano.

Bear in mind that most of the contributors on this site probably never saw him.

August, 2006, and I still feel sad that Bill has left us. Where is his strength? He created his own style, just a few chords and you know it's Bill playing. What a style -and that is one of the most remarkable artistic achievements, in any field. A real pity you can't enjoy him Tom.

Has anyone on this site actually played transcriptions of Bill's solos? If you had, you'd have the experience of playing one inner voice wrong in a ten-note chord in a ten-chord sequence that you otherwise played perfectly, and find that the entire sequence loses half the emotional impact it had when played correctly. And that's before getting to the issue of Bill's almost impossible-to-duplicate pianistic touch that turns the piano (what is basically a rhythm box only a few evolutionary steps removed from a set of bongos) into a singing instrument capable of almost inconceivable emotional nuance.

P.S. There's great stuff throughout the entire Evans canon, but what really keeps me coming back for more these days are the live "last trio" recordings (Turn out the Stars and The Last Waltz). I saw Evans-Johnson-LaBarbera perform twice (and met Evans the second time) but probably didn't really appreciate the music until I studied the recordings (and the transcriptions). Among the best renditions in the late period are "Emily", "Two Lonely People", "Midnight Mood" and "Turn Out the Stars".

To Nick, Daniel, & Eric - I know it's kind of a long article, but did you read the whole thing? I'm very capable of enjoying Bill Evans, and I appreciate the nuance he brought to the instrument. I just don't care for the hype, and I'm trying to find the music that is really there, without the hype to distort it.

Eric, I daresay one could substitute *any* of the "great" jazz pianist's name in the 'play transcriptions of their solos' game, and the answers would be the same. They're impossible to duplicate. That's why we listen to their records obsessively and discuss them endlessly.

Duh, yeah, some of us are writers around here, and we say a lot of stuff that some agree with and some don't. If it were otherwise, there'd be no Bagatellen here.

Bill had a reason for every note he played. He had the technical facility of a pupil with over 400 years of pianistic influence. I think his purity of expression developed from his realizations of transfiguration (due to his addiction) which provoked an intuitive knowledge that words, symbols, sounds, emotions, and ultimately ideas have infinitely immense potential to unify human consciousness. When we listen to, or have the ability to recreate, Bill's music, our minds become entranced and unified with his perception of the world (essentially: "to exist", "to be human", "to love", "to think") and from this we explore our own sentiments while simultaneously and humbly accepting the nearly perfect musical answer/compliment which had been previously stated. Bill, to me, is more original than other pianists because he was true to himself (by having the ability to think and act independently, yet integrating the thoughts of countless other composers) and by nature he made music that neccessarily makes itself the origin of our own thoughts. If you disagree...then you have your right to reject contemplation of thought. But if you've ever felt connected to any kind of music, you might see what I'm trying to explain. Bill's unique idea of what his mind is...essentially a mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain whose chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with...was so in-tune with the nature of thought of his time (as he put it, a "romantic period"). Within this ecstacy of thought, Bill likely used the methadone-aided mechanical facility, genius, and sheer willpower to translate the nuances of the emotional nature of thought into that which we call music. For the good of music, Bill's style evolved.
The best use of style is to come as close as possible to expressing the Idea, the pre-existent reality equated with the word, even with the holy. Bill knew this clearer than I know it. It's also important to note that, as Bill put it:
"I never strive for identity. That's something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually...I want to build my music from the bottom up, piece by piece, and kind of put it together according to my own way of organizing things...I just have a reason that I arrived at myself for every note I play."

Don't label Bill Evans, because you can't label God.
God is the efficient cause of all that can fall within the sphere of an infinite intellect, and is not only the sole free cause of their existence, but also of their essence (Spinoza).
Bill was an infinite intellect, he merely lacked confindence.
Jesus came to show people the path to follow, and everyone kept staring at his finger. Similarly, Bill came to show people the musical path to conscious enlightenment, and everyone is still staring at his fingers. We need to listen.

Kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison
Christe eleison
Christe eleison
Kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison

Clever...

Jesus, what's happening to Bags? Funny ringtones on one thread and Christ's finger on another one!

There's a song on the new 7000 Dying Rats album (drums by Weasel Walter!) called "Jesus Farted."

I'm just sayin'...

Can we find some way to argue about farts?

Its interesting that Evans came into prominece through working with Miles who is another artist whose body of work is uneven, but whose influence is staggering. Evans and Miles were also similar in that they developed understated styles of playing that became widely imitated.

One of the reasons could be that they developed *very* personal styles. Throw Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard and Miles in a room together. A careful listener can hear the differences between Clifford's aggressive attack, Lee's slide, slur and bend virtuosity and Hubbard's clear notes and polished execution, but even the uninitiated would recognize Mile's tone and conceptual approach as being something altogether different - despite his considerably lesser amount of chops.

Miles once said "Sometimes it takes a long time to learn to play like yourself." I believe only a handful make it. I also believe that other people are drawn to the few who do. There is an element of truth to their performances that is irresistable.

Evans and Miles both reached a point where their own mothers would have recognized them on the radio - even if they had never heard their sons play before.

This quality has nothing to do with whether your playing reflects the history of jazz, or the developments of the marketplace, or the arrival of the next wave of new deconstructionists (or artistic liberators if you prefer), or even if your overall ability overshadows your contempoaries.

It brings to mind Billie Holiday's vocals. She was not the "best" singer from a range and technique standpoint. Nonetheless, she could do one thing brilliantly: connect to people's emotions. That ability has made her an influence on Jazz singers to this day. Miles and Evens at their best did the same. It doesn't really matter if their later work was anemic, or if their self-destructive impulses blunted what might have been.

Think about Wynton M. The guy is a virtuoso player, Historian, and ambassador for Jazz. I even think that he has probably gotten to a point where he "plays like himself." (Perhaps being the ultimate Jazz Poindexter IS being himself). Yet if you read many posts about him in Jazz discussions on the Web many comments are negative. He certainly isn't as well regarded as Miles.

Could it be that the artists who do reach this level of self expression are MORE interesting to us when they get there despite their limitations?

Bill Evans might be compared to a Picasso that had his "Blue period", but never went on to develop Cubism. If that was all Pablo had done, he would still be remembered. Evans deserves to be remembered.

Wbb, thank you. In just a few pithy sentences, you shot several thousand words of worthless drivel straight out of the saddle. To answer your question, "do any of you who are actual musicians let the people who write all these meaningless words about music determine for you what music means to you?", no, of course we don't. The Tom Djll's of the world exist as inane commentators on something they don't understand, because it defies their pedantic intellectualizations. Their words are very useful to other dimbulbs who can't sleep at night unless they have an intelligent 'line' on subjects like Bill to take out at parties.

Tom, it's been 30 years and your ego is still hurting. I hope writing "Signifying Junkie" was therapeutic.

This is not a response to the article, but to the discussion- I think it is sad that musical discussion on jazz is so bitter; it feels like everybody is trying to legitimize their own musical tastes by proving that his or her own is more intellectual than somebody elses; more "refined", more "observant", etc. As some are pointing out, music is made for enjoyment, and thus the effectiveness of a musical performance or recording has to do with how much an individual enjoys it-for whatever reason they enjoy a particular thing. In educating myself on jazz, there is a common factor in the artists I listen to-I like them. I tried to like Wes Montgomery's "The Incredible Jazz Guitar", and while I can confirm that it is all of those things; incredible, jazz, and guitar, I only like a few of the selections. Anyway, this is fine, because my purpose (or anyone else's!) in life is not being the most sophisticated music listener around. Doesn't that sound like a rather stale and annoying endeavor anyway? It is very possible for music to be raped by separating it from it's connection to life- to reflect life and meaningful things in life (rather than give meaning to life; though it can give somebody something to do, and uplift a person, a collection of notes and rhythms offers no meaning to life). Thus the joy is stolen from music, which was its original function. Person A's preference of music A is legitimate for the same reason that Person B's appreciation for music B is; and when A attacks B, he also attacks his own music listening. Anyway, thanks for reading. Goodnight.

Paging Walter Horn........

Thank you for this excellent, provocative article and for the many thoughtful responses.

If I may briefly add my two cents, I think Tom Djill is right to decry the romanticization and even fetishization of albums like Sunday @ the VV. And as a young jazz pianist, I can say that Evans' playing has unduly influenced my own, to the point of sometimes being a crippling presence. Also, the exhilarating vitality, variety, and sense of discovery (and the CONCENTRATION of his COMPOSITIONAL mind, as Larry Kart pointed out) heard on albums like Everybody Digs and Kind of Blue are a testament to Tom's argument that Evans' greatest innovations may have taken place before 1961.

Yet, even as I sift through these troubling matters, I find myself defending Bill as well. To say that he did not develop after 1961 or so is utterly absurd: the evolution of a song like "Spring is Here" from a pretty ballad on Portrait in Jazz to the raptly beautiful evocation of the "Live at NYC Town Hall" recording, the change in his solo playing from "Conversations with Myself" in 1963 to "New Conversations" 1978, and his adaptation to a considerably more aggressive sound on albums like "Tokyo Concert" and "You Must Believe in Spring" are but a few examples.

That said, not everything he does within his very personalized style may point us forward to new discoveries in the way that Everybody Digs, Conversations with Myself, 1968 Montreux, or a host of individual tracks like “Hullo Bolinas” might. The same has been said about Bartok. But that makes them no less worthy as artists. And I surely wouldn't want to dismiss Evans without the context of his entire career. His oft-underestimated technical facility and control of the piano (which may not be immediately evident to listeners more accustomed to McCoy's runs or Tatum's verbosity), his genuine, humble spirit (which would be probably be embarrassed by this very webpage), and his ability to speak about music (much more succinctly than me) are not to be taken lightly either.

"Signifying Junkie" comes more than 25 years after Evans' death. The posts in reaction to it are still coming almost a year later. Whether you love or hate his music there can be no quarrel that Evans' art has stood the test of time. For that I think the Signifying Junkie would have a wide smile.

I was not very interested in his work and then a friend who put together the 3 cd box of the Village Vanguard trio recordings gave me one.
Wow. I had heard the lps but I had just not heard this music before. LaFaro just sounds so great as does the rest of the music. It was great getting that surprise in the mail.
It just goes to show you you always need to revisit and revise what you think you know.

Damon,

"you always need to revisit and revise what you think you know."

Good point. My article's partly a story about my own ongoing revision of opinion on Bill Evans' music. Funny that the flamers don't see that, they just knee-jerkily defend their hero. *That* tired process, one that infects all chat sites, never seems to change.

Terry Gross is replaying her 2006 interview with Paul Motian today, and he says [paraphrasing] "I quit the trio in the middle of a tour because I couldn't stand to see him killing himself--and the music [due to Evans' heroin addiction]...by the end of it I was playing with brushes and it seemed that I just couldn't play soft enough... the music was disappearing."

Worth a listen:">">http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9879458>

thanks for the article!

i've been mildly obsessed with late '50s bill like miles' '58 sessions but am luke warm about the vanguard recordings.

check our "modern art" by art farmer. brilliant bill evans!

Having been a jazz pianist/composer/arranger myself for the past few years (45 to be exact) I've been threading through these academic diatribes realising that everyone is entitled to their own opinions/tastes. But my educated guess is that if you don't understand the influence (I'm not talking about the clones) of BE on generations of musicians then you just don't hear it. I once told an excellent tenor player friend of mine about my enthusiasm for Mozart and he said "why? ain't he just running a bunch of scales together?"
Actually...yeah. That is what he did. 20 years later that same musician refused to admit that he had ever said that claiming that he was never that lame!
And anyone who has said that Bill was the most influential musician of his time is full of xxxx.
They are ignoring the efforts of Trane, Ornette, Herbie, Miles, and so many other giants that have contributed enormously to our tradition. No one with any ears/brains would say anything but that Bill was a giant of the piano along with other giants.
The question is truely academic and not at all musical.

"It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz
as an intellectual theorem.
It's not.
It's feeling." (William John Evans)

I remember going to a museum in Amsterdam and seeing a famous Vermeer, "The Milkmaid", which I had seen so many posters of as a college student, maybe even had one in my dormroom. It was hard to look at that small painting after all the hype, it was as if I had to fend off the media blitz and try to really see what was there, anew, with innocence, with heart and with an uncluttered mind. I feel I was able to, witnessing an infinitely quiet and unassuming moment, just the basics, milk, bread, simple clothing, a simple room, a hushed moment of inner stillness, where we are safe and all our needs met.

I understand the need, in general, to destroy any hype and think that is good. Wouldn't you rather discover a painting of a woman with an enigmatic smile by a guy called Da Vinci yourself in some corner of a museum? Ever tried appreciating it at the Louvre?

Art can be looked at through many prisms and an ecstatic, religious one like Brian's above is as valid as any. So is a highly analytic one, for that matter.

To me. Bill Evans is a lifeline. He makes living bearable and more because of the window he has opened on something...what, I'm not quite sure, but am sure that none of the following words express completely what that 'what' is: the truth, the Purpose, Beauty, the ineffable, Heart.

I also understand that there are so many for whom BE is not their cup of tea. It's just a matter of temperament, like people in the Middle East often gravitate toward a religion with a different 'tone' to it.

I think all these posts constitute an interesting, nearly philosophical analysis of Art and consequently of Truth,even politics, bringing up interesting questions: the conflict between diversity /relativism on the one hand and unity (of opinion)/or any concept of truth that transcends personal truth, on the other.

Conflict is always below BE's music, the sadness and sweetness of knowledge gained from our rollercoaster ride on this earth.

Very interesting article. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, though I disagree with much of it. I'd just like to say that there is no such thing as "overrated," and that every piece of music that has been "hyped" in the past and gained stature and critical and popular favor over the years has earned it. Just because you don't hear it doesn't mean that everyone else is lying or doesn't understand it like you do. There's a reason for it all. Just like Jelly Roll and Fats Waller and every other acclaimed jazz pianist, Bill Evans received praise because of the way he spoke to people through his music. It's hard to deny he is one of the most influential jazz pianists of all time. Influence = popularity and critical favor. Those '61 Village Vanguard tunes were incredibly influential to all piano trios that followed in their wake. Again, you're not wrong for your personal opinion, but it's useless to try and defend something as "over-hyped." It's like saying that you *know more* than the people who hyped it in the first place. And who knows, maybe in ten years or something, you'll return to the Village Vanguard recordings and be touched like never before, in a way that millions of other jazz enthusiasts have. Then you'll understand why they're so loved.

I know that Orrin Keepnews is guilty of over-hyping that music. It's sick -- just look at the packaging, at all the releases and re-releases that Riverside has put out over the years. I bet Orrin bought a boat with what he made off that stuff.

And, in the matter of the music itself, sure, it's just my opinion, and I'm welcome to it. Owing to a set of criteria which I laid out in the article, I rule that the VV sessions are not so superior to other Evans material of that era (such as the studio work with Motian and LaFaro) as to rate all the hyping of Keepnews et al.

There, now nobody has to read the article.

I love to listen to Bill Evans, and I have tons of his printed and recorded music. But sometimes I need something different, so I listen to Herbie, Chick, McCoy, Oscar, Keith, etc. So the key is to enjoy each artist and then enjoy the contrasts.

Tsk, tsk, such acrimony. I have to say, however, that I enjoyed almost everything that was written here. I think djll was just trying to demythologize BE a bit, and although BE was a transformative artist in my life, there's still plenty of open room for discussion. Hagiographies do tend to become tiresome, after all. At such time as the controversy ceases, then there will be cause for concern. With that being said, Evans is still one of those 'Jazz before BE/Jazz after BE' guys and probably all present would agree on that point.

(And BTW, don't nobody be badmouthin' Fats.)

Tsk, tsk, such acrimony. I have to say, however, that I enjoyed almost everything that was written here. I think djll was just trying to demythologize BE a bit, and although BE was a transformative artist in my life, there's still plenty of open room for discussion. Hagiographies do tend to become tiresome, after all. At such time as the controversy ceases, then there will be cause for concern. With that being said, Evans is still one of those 'Jazz before BE/Jazz after BE' guys and probably all present would agree on that point.

(And BTW, don't nobody be badmouthin' Fats.)