Jazz Appreciation Month - April 2007

William John Evans

William John Evans

1929-1980

Also known as: Bill Evans
Birth: August 16, 1929
Death: September 15, 1980

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

Evans, William John ("Bill") (Aug. 16, 1929 - Sept. 15, 1980), jazz pianist and composer, was born in Plainfield, N.J., the son of Harry F. Evans and Mary Soroka. As a boy Evans played the flute, violin, and piano. He graduated from North Plainfield High School in 1946 and attended Southeastern Louisiana College, where he graduated in 1950 with a major in piano and a minor in flute.

Evans served in the United States Army from 1951 to 1954. He was stationed in Illinois, where he played the flute in an army band. During his off-duty hours he pursued his interest in jazz, performing as a pianist in nightclubs in Chicago. In 1955 he returned to the New York City area and did postgraduate work at the Mannes College of Music. He began in earnest his career as a jazz musician, playing piano with such noted jazz artists as Tony Scott and Charles Mingus. He studied the modal techniques of jazz composer George Russell, and began to incorporate them into his own improvisations and compositions. His piano solo on Russell's 1957 recording "All About Rosie," commissioned by the 1957 Brandeis University Festival of the Arts, brought Evans widespread recognition and praise.

The key factor in Evans's development as a musician was his replacement in 1959 of the pianist Red Garland in a sextet led by trumpeter Miles Davis. The ensemble included alto saxophonist "Cannonball" Adderley, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb. Davis's influence on Evans was profound. During their brief association, Evans refined the distinctive improvisational and accompaniment style that would place his personal stamp on a whole generation of pianists. The sextet produced the Columbia Records album Kind of Blue (1959), which became the benchmark for modal improvising. Evans's piano playing combined his modal experience with Russell with the innovative modal style that Davis was exploring. The album represented a pathbreaking shift from improvising over a set of fixed harmonic progressions to the free use of church modes, which dated back to medieval sacred music.

After finishing his stint with the Davis group, Evans formed his own trio the same year. Before Evans, the trio was a setting that used the bass and drums as accompaniment to and reinforcement of the solo piano line. With Evans, drums and bass became central to the musical experience. By the early 1960's, he had forever changed the way trio playing will be evaluated. His classic ensemble included drummer Paul Motian and bassist Scott LaFaro. Much of what is generally considered the essence of Bill Evans's trio playing was produced during this collaboration, including the 1961 Riverside albums Waltz for Debby and Live at Village Vanguard. This creative outburst of the late 1950's through the early 1960's was cut short by the death of LaFaro in an automobile accident in 1961. It was not until Evans started to work with bassist Chuck Israels a year later that his concept of the unified trio continued to evolve. He recorded the highly acclaimed Verne album Trio '65

The trio remained Evans's preferred format and he continued to polish his signature style with various ensembles. He also made albums of duets with Jim Hall, Eddie Gomez, and Tony Bennett. A legendary solo performer, he recorded two albums with Verve, Conversations with Myself (1963) and Further Conversations with Myself (1967), where he improvised against a prerecorded track of his own playing. In 1973, Evans married Nenette Zazzara; they adopted one child.

Evans was a prolific composer. His compositions, however, were closely tied to his improvisational style and few became well-known standards performed by other artists. Despite health difficulties involving stomach ulcer and liver problems and a recurring struggle with drug addiction, Evans appeared in public and recorded regularly until just before his death in New York City. Davis paid homage to Evans with the ultimate accolade, remarking that "he played the piano the way it should be played."

Evans's influence on pianists extended beyond the trio setting into the realm of extended improvisations and reharmonization of popular melodies. One of the best ways to study Evans's approach is to look at transcriptions of his improvisatory performances, which are note-for-note renderings of his playing. His style encompassed long, flowing melodic lines with very sparse left-hand accompaniment and then beautiful full reharmonized chords with nonchord tone intervals of half and whole steps. Evans's compositions often utilized a few basic formulas or patterns combined into a complex structure over which he then improvised. His innovations have been incorporated into the vocabulary of a succeeding generation of jazz pianists, including Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett.

Evans received five Grammy awards and won the Down Beat critics poll five times, England's Melody Maker award (1968), and Japan's Swing Journal award (1969).

Evans died in New York City.


with Israels and drummer Larry Bunker.

SOURCE CITATION

Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 10: 1976-1980.