Bill Evans
A pianist who went to the deepest places by way of the quietest sounds.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Companions ⏳🌊
- FamilyHarry Evans
His brother, two years older, was his first guide to the piano, and his death in 1979 became Evans's last great wound.
- TeacherGeorge Russell
The composer who widened his harmonic vision with the Lydian Chromatic Concept and put him on stage during his New York years.
- PatronOrrin Keepnews
As Riverside's producer, he made the debut and the classic LaFaro trio albums, and waited for him through the hard years.
- ColleagueMiles Davis
Brought him into the band in 1958 and made “Kind of Blue” with him, making his name known to the world.
- ColleagueScott LaFaro
The bassist with whom he opened up the piano trio as a conversation among equals; he died in an accident in 1961, at twenty-five.
- SupportHelen Keane
From around 1962 until his death, she stood by him as manager and producer.
I. The brothers of Plainfield · 1929–1950 (age 0–21)
(Birth) He was born in August 1929 in Plainfield, New Jersey. His given name was William John Evans. His father, Harry Leon Evans, was of Welsh descent and ran a golf driving range; the biographies note that he had a drinking problem. His mother, Mary Soroka, came from a family of Rusyn immigrants from Eastern Europe; she loved to play the piano and took the children to Orthodox services. Some critics would later hear the resonance of Orthodox chant in his slow, thick harmonies. (Brother) His brother Harry, two years older, was his lifelong companion on the road. When Harry began piano lessons, six-year-old Bill learned alongside him, and he went on to pick up the violin and flute as well. A gifted sight-reader, he read his way through Mozart·Beethoven·Schubert, whatever came to hand. The brothers were less rivals than each other's first audience. (Blue note) At twelve or thirteen, playing “Tuxedo Junction” with a local dance band, he slipped in an improvised note that wasn't on the page, and he recalled the thrill of that moment, as if the music had at last become his own. After that he learned the grammar of jazz by ear, following records by Nat King Cole, Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano. (Louisiana) In 1946 he entered Southeastern Louisiana College in Hammond, Louisiana, and in 1950 earned degrees in piano performance and music education. It was around this time, too, that he fell deeply under the spell of the hazy, richly colored harmonies of Debussy and Ravel. “Very Early,” which he wrote as a student, would enter his trio's repertoire more than a decade later. In these years the classical delicacy learned in the classroom and the jazz rhythm learned on the bandstand settled into a single body.
II. From the army band to New York · 1950–1958 (age 21–29)
(The army) Right after graduating he joined saxophonist Herbie Fields's band and toured Chicago and elsewhere, but he was soon drafted. From 1951 to 1954 he played flute and piano in the Army band at Fort Sheridan, outside Chicago. Fellow musicians often needled him about his unfamiliar harmonies, and he is said to have confided that this badly shook his confidence. (New York) After his discharge he spent a while immersed in practice, then moved to New York in 1955 and continued his studies at the Mannes College of Music. He worked with clarinetist Tony Scott and the Jerry Wald orchestra, among others, and paid the bills accompanying in clubs and playing private engagements. (Russell) His meeting with the composer George Russell proved decisive. Russell was refining a theory that rebuilt harmony around a single scale (the Lydian Chromatic Concept), and Evans was the player who could realize those ideas at the keyboard. In 1957 Evans's solo on “All About Rosie,” which Russell wrote for the Brandeis University festival of the arts, caught the critics' attention. That same year he also took part in the recording of Charles Mingus's album “East Coasting.” (Debut) A demo tape that guitarist Mundell Lowe played over the telephone won over Orrin Keepnews, a producer at Riverside Records. In 1956 his first album as a leader, “New Jazz Conceptions,” included “Waltz for Debby,” a solo piece of just over a minute dedicated to Debby, the young daughter of his brother Harry. Keepnews recalled that the record sold only a few hundred copies in its first year. Evans said he would hold off on his next recording until he had something new to say, and Keepnews waited nearly two years for him.
III. In Miles's room · 1958–1959 (age 29–30)
(Joining) In the spring of 1958, Miles Davis sent for him. It was a sextet with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Some listeners and musicians resented him as the band's only white member, but Davis stood up for him, saying he cared only about ability. In his autobiography Davis later wrote that there was a kind of quiet fire in his playing, and that through him he had come to know Ravel and Rachmaninoff anew. (Burnout) But the relentless touring, the stares aimed at the color of his skin and his own conviction that his playing fell short wore him down. In November 1958 he left the band. His biographers write that it was around this time, too, that he began using heroin. It was a shadow that would follow him for more than twenty years. (Solo) On the cover of “Everybody Digs Bill Evans,” recorded that December, were printed tributes from Davis, Adderley, Ahmad Jamal and George Shearing. The solo piece on it, “Peace Piece,” was born as an improvisation over a left hand that repeats two chords without end. In the same period he made his first recording of Davis's tune “Nardis” on Adderley's “Portrait of Cannonball,” and also played on Chet Baker's album “Chet.” (Return) In March and April 1959, Davis called him back into the studio. It was “Kind of Blue.” Tunes that dwell at length on a single scale instead of following a set chord progression (modal jazz) meshed deeply with Evans's harmonic sense, and “Flamenco Sketches” set out from the same opening figure as “Peace Piece.” He also wrote the album's liner notes. Accounts still differ over who composed “Blue in Green.”
A solo he drew up by improvisation, alone in the studio, a month after leaving Davis's band exhausted. It holds the stillness of someone who has stepped back from the noise.
- The left hand repeats two chords in the same rhythm from beginning to end. Over this stubbornly repeated figure (ostinato) laid down at the bottom, only the right hand moves freely.
- The right hand sets out from a plain melody of a few notes and builds tension by gradually adding notes that clash with the underlying chords (dissonances), before returning at the end to the stillness of the opening.
- Because the flow stretches and contracts as if breathing rather than keeping strict time (rubato), it can sound less like jazz than like one of Debussy's piano miniatures.
- Evans explained that a figure he originally played as the introduction to Bernstein's song “Some Other Time” grew, right there in the session, into a piece of its own. The same figure would become the starting point of “Flamenco Sketches” the following year.
A session to which Evans, who had left the band, was called back; his harmonic sense and his liner notes set the album's atmosphere.
- “So What” opens with a short introduction shared between Evans's piano and Paul Chambers's bass. Then the bass sings a phrase and the piano answers with two chords, and this call and response becomes the backbone of the piece.
- The chords the piano strikes here are stacks of fourths topped by a third; this arrangement of notes (voicing) is still called the 'So What chord' and appears in instruction books.
- “Blue in Green” is a short form that comes around every ten bars. Davis whispers on trumpet through a metal mute (Harmon mute), while Coltrane seems to shift the flow with quick notes that slice the beat finely.
- The recording took place over two days at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York; the players are said to have come in with only sketches of the tunes and to have kept mostly first complete takes.
IV. A conversation of three · 1959–1961 (age 30–32)
(Trio) What he dreamed of was not a trio in which the piano is master and bass and drums back it up, but one in which the three instruments speak to one another as equals. At the end of 1959, the twenty-three-year-old bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian came together. Instead of marking the beat evenly, LaFaro drew lines in the high register as if answering the piano, while Motian blurred the beat with wire whisks (brushes), opening up space. (Recordings) “Portrait in Jazz” came out on Riverside in December 1959, and “Explorations” in February 1961. Keepnews recalled that on the day “Explorations” was recorded there was bad feeling between Evans and LaFaro and that Evans was plagued by a headache, but the record betrays none of that tension. Always strapped by the cost of drugs, he is said to have frequently asked Keepnews for advances. (Vanguard) On Sunday, June 25, 1961, at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village, the trio played five sets from afternoon into night. The recordings, which captured even the clink of glasses and the laughter in this basement club run by Max Gordon, were released as two albums, “Sunday at the Village Vanguard” and “Waltz for Debby.” (Loss) Eleven days later, on July 6, LaFaro was killed in a car accident in upstate New York. He was twenty-five. For months Evans hardly performed, and those around him recalled that he spent his days sitting alone at the piano. Keepnews built “Sunday at the Village Vanguard” around LaFaro's compositions “Gloria's Step” and “Jade Visions,” and the album became, in the end, a memorial.
His first studio album with LaFaro·Motian, the first declaration of a trio in which three people converse as equals.
- In “Autumn Leaves,” right after the theme comes a passage in which piano·bass·drums trade short improvisations all at once, with no line between accompaniment and solo. It is something like a manifesto for playing that reacts on the spot to one another's sounds (interplay).
- Instead of marking four even beats, LaFaro's bass draws melodic lines in the high register and slips in between the piano's phrases.
- Over several passes through the form (choruses), Evans's solo spins out long single-note lines in the right hand, then weaves them together with dense left-hand chords. Its hallmark is a rhythmic feel that glides, edging slightly ahead of or behind the beat.
- The trio version of “Blue in Green” is included too; set beside the Davis band's version, it lets you hear how differently the same tune can breathe.
Recorded live at the Village Vanguard eleven days before LaFaro's death, it is the last recording this trio left behind. A miniature dedicated to his niece grew into the trio's signature tune.
- The title tune begins with the piano quietly unfolding the theme as a waltz in three, then gains energy as the trio shifts into four with a push-and-pull feel on the back of the beat (swing).
- “My Foolish Heart” is an extremely slow ballad. Motian's brushes sweep across the beat, barely audible, cradling the piano's lingering tones.
- The chatter of the audience and the clink of glasses are captured intact. The contrast of a noisy club in which only the three are listening to one another gives this recording its distinctive mood.
- Listen for the moments when Evans retreats into accompaniment during LaFaro's solo and then steps forward again, as leader and follower trade places naturally.
V. Back at the keyboard · 1961–1969 (age 32–40)
(Comeback) At the end of 1961 he formed a trio again, bringing in bassist Chuck Israels. The ballad collections “Moonbeams” and “How My Heart Sings!,” recorded back to back in the spring of 1962, are steeped in a lyricism folded further inward after the loss. That same year he recorded “Undercurrent” as a duo with guitarist Jim Hall. (Contract) Weighed down by debts and drugs, he fulfilled the recordings remaining on his Riverside contract and in 1962 moved to Verve, run by Creed Taylor. Around the same time Helen Keane, who had worked in television, became his manager. Keane handled everything from negotiating fees to planning records, later took producer credits on a number of albums, and stayed by his side until his death. (Conversation) In 1963 he won his first Grammy for “Conversations with Myself,” on which he overdubbed piano two and three times over his own playing. In 1964 he recorded with Stan Getz, but the session was not released until nine years later. (Companion) In these years Ellaine Schultz was at his side. A companion of more than a decade, she held together a life shaken by drugs, the biographies note. In 1966 the twenty-one-year-old bassist Eddie Gomez joined him and stayed for eleven years. That same year he filmed a documentary sitting across from his brother Harry, talking about the principles of improvisation. In 1968 a live recording from the Montreux Jazz Festival with Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette brought him a second Grammy.
The year after losing LaFaro, a dialogue for just two, with guitarist Jim Hall and neither bass nor drums.
- “My Funny Valentine” is usually played as a slow ballad, but here it races along at a brisk tempo. When one man solos, the other single-handedly takes on both the accompaniment and the bass.
- While Jim Hall solos, Evans fills the role of an entire rhythm section with nothing but short, clipped chords in his left hand. The passages where each picks up the tail of the other's line and carries it on come close to conversation.
- The guitar's round, mellow tone and the piano's clear one overlap in a similar register without tangling, because each player chooses, on the spot, voicings that step out of the other's way.
- The cover, a photograph by Toni Frissell of a woman floating in water, is remembered, like the title, as an image of tension flowing beneath the surface.
An experiment made with producer Creed Taylor after his move to Verve, it earned him his first Grammy. The man who had dreamed of a conversation among equals now held one with himself.
- Over a first piano track he layered a second and a third (overdubbing), playing three pianos by himself. It is built so that when one track takes the accompaniment, another answers back.
- Three Thelonious Monk tunes are included: “'Round Midnight,” “Blue Monk” and “Bemsha Swing.” It is fascinating to hear Monk's angular harmonies smoothed and rounded in Evans's hands.
- “N.Y.C.'s No Lark” honors pianist Sonny Clark, who had died early that year; the title itself is an anagram of Clark's name.
- Where the three layers of piano overlap, they are placed so that different voices sound from left and right; on earphones, the weave of the conversation comes through even more clearly.
VI. The last waltz · 1970–1980 (age 41–51)
(Recovery) In the early 1970s methadone treatment freed him from heroin. In 1971 he won another Grammy for The Bill Evans Album, on which he also played electric piano. Counting those during his life and after it, his Grammys came to seven. (Parting) In 1973 his longtime companion Ellaine Schultz threw herself onto the tracks of the New York subway and died. That same year he married Nenette, and in 1975 they had a son. The “B Minor Waltz” he later wrote carries the subtitle “For Ellaine.” (Friends) In 1975 and 1976 he made two duo albums with singer Tony Bennett, just piano and voice. Drummer Marty Morell gave way to Eliot Zigmund, and in 1978 his final trio took shape with Marc Johnson on bass and Joe LaBarbera on drums. He cherished this trio above all. (Brother) But in the late 1970s he sank into cocaine, and his body was breaking down from long-neglected hepatitis. In April 1979 his brother Harry, who suffered from schizophrenia, took his own life. “We Will Meet Again,” written for Harry, became the title of the album he recorded that year. (The end) In late summer 1980 he played his last extended engagement at the Keystone Korner club in San Francisco. On September 15 he died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York of a bleeding peptic ulcer, cirrhosis of the liver and pneumonia. He was fifty-one. His old friend, the writer Gene Lees, called his death the longest suicide in history. He was buried in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, beside his brother Harry.
An album on which pieces dedicated to his departed companion and to his still-living brother sit side by side; it was released only in 1981, after his death.
- “B Minor Waltz” is subtitled as a piece for Ellaine, “We Will Meet Again” as one for Harry. Songs addressed to the two follow one another on a single album.
- Eddie Gómez's bass sings in its upper register, intertwining with the piano's lines, and lets us hear how ripe the rapport between two longtime partners had become.
- The title track is by Michel Legrand; Evans stretches the tempo freely and lets each chord linger. It reveals how slowly, how carefully, he set down his sounds in his final years.
- It was recorded in August 1977 at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, produced by Helen Keane. The last track is the theme from the television series “M*A*S*H,” and its understated reading leaves a strange afterglow over the whole album.
Lesser-known stories
(Notes) Few people realize that the liner notes for Kind of Blue were written by Evans. He likened improvisation to a Japanese art of painting in which a brush, once set to thin paper, cannot correct its strokes, so the artist must paint without hesitation. Because the album is remembered under Davis's name, the pianist's essay survives only as small print on the back of the jacket. (Composer) “Blue in Green” was credited to Davis on the record, but Evans later said in interviews that he had written it. A biography relates his recollection that when he raised the matter, Davis handed him a check for 25 dollars. Davis, for his part, wrote in his autobiography that he had composed the album's tunes, so the truth remains caught between the two men's conflicting memories. (Brothers) In the 1966 documentary The Universal Mind of Bill Evans, he sits across from his brother Harry, a music teacher in Baton Rouge, and talks about how to learn improvisation. The scenes in which the elder brother asks and the younger answers at the piano show both his conviction as a teacher that principles come before technique and the special bond between the two brothers. Made as an educational film, it long went unnoticed by the public. (Black Forest) In June 1968, five days after the Montreux concert, the trio recorded at the MPS studio in Villingen, in Germany's Black Forest. The tapes slept for nearly half a century before emerging in 2016 on Resonance Records under the title Some Other Time. Since the trio with Gómez·DeJohnette had left almost no studio recordings, scholars greeted it as a rare find.
Terminology notes 📚🔎
Modal jazz
(Meaning) Mode comes from the Latin modus, meaning 'manner·frame.' In music it refers to the framework that determines which notes a melody is built from, in other words a mode (旋法). (In jazz) Rather than tracking chord progressions that change every few bars, it is jazz that holds on to a single scale for a long time and unfolds melody freely within it. Kind of Blue from 1959 is the classic example, and Evans's harmonic sense suited this approach well. If playing over chord changes is a race over hurdles set out in sequence, modal jazz is more like running wherever you like across a wide playing field — though you must make your own path. (Elsewhere) In games and machines, a mode means a way of operating, as in story mode or power-saving mode.
Voicing
(Meaning) From the English voice, the term means deciding where to place each note of a chord, like the parts of a choir. (In jazz) Even the same chord sounds entirely different depending on which note goes on top, which is left out and which is doubled. Evans avoided striking the root in his left hand and built his chords around the notes above it, creating clear, transparent harmonies; this approach became a textbook for later pianists. It is like four classmates posing for a group photo: who stands in the front row and who goes up on tiptoe changes the feel of the picture.
Interplay
(Meaning) A combination of inter ('between, among') and play ('to perform, to play'), meaning playing that passes back and forth. (In jazz) Soloist and accompanist do not stay locked in fixed roles but react to each other's sounds on the spot, playing as if in conversation. The Evans·LaFaro·Motian trio raised this approach to the center of the piano trio. Like two soccer players breaking through the defense with a one-two pass, it is playing in which you listen for what your partner will do before choosing your next move. (Elsewhere) In everyday English it means interaction between people or elements.
Rubato
(Meaning) From the Italian tempo rubato, 'stolen time.' Rubare means 'to steal': time is stolen from one place and given to another. (In jazz) Playing that does not keep strictly to a steady beat but stretches and compresses the tempo with the flow. Evans favored rubato in ballad introductions and solo pieces, creating a natural breath, like speech. It is like reading a book aloud, slowing for important sentences and speeding up through exciting passages — the overall length stays about the same, but the pace rises and falls like waves.
Ostinato
(Meaning) Italian for 'stubborn,' sharing a root with the English obstinate. (In jazz) The stubborn repetition of a short figure or chord from beginning to end. Because the same pattern keeps running underneath, the melody above can stray as far as it likes without getting lost. The left hand of “Peace Piece” is the classic example. It is like long-rope jumping: as long as the two people at either end keep turning the rope in the same rhythm, the jumper inside can show off all sorts of tricks.
Overdubbing
(In jazz) A technique of recording a new performance on top of sound already recorded. In 1963, on Conversations with Myself, Evans layered two more pianos over his own, creating a three-way conversation all by himself. It is like recording a song with a phone recording app, then playing it back and singing a harmony over it to record a second layer. (Elsewhere) In Korean, dubbing usually means replacing the dialogue of foreign films or animation with Korean voices.
Chorus
(Meaning) From the Greek choros, the term for the group that sang, danced and helped tell the story in ancient Greek theater. (In jazz) One complete pass through a tune's form from start to finish. In a 32-bar tune, 32 bars make one chorus. Because soloists improvise over this frame for several rounds, people say things like so-and-so's second chorus is the highlight. If one lap of a running track is a chorus, a solo means circling the same track many times, running it differently each lap. (Elsewhere) In everyday use it refers to a choir or the refrain of a song.