Bill Evans at Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1978, two years before his death.
Everybody digs Bill Evans.
That's how Riverside Records titled the jazz pianist's second album in 1958, and 54 years later, everybody just seems to be digging Evans even more. Although there has been a steady stream of tributes to his extraordinary influence since his death in 1980, things have really picked up in recent months.
Chick Corea just released a two-disc live set called Further Explorations, on which he joins two of Evans's best-known sidemen, bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Paul Motian, for a romp through tunes by and inspired by Evans. Waltz for Bill, the debut album by Toronto pianist Tom Szczesniak, takes its title from Evan's most famous tune, Waltz for Debby, while Autour de Bill Evans, by Montreal saxophonist Frank Lozano, offers a group approach to Evans's legacy that Lozano and his band mates toured across Canada last fall.
"It [was]packed everywhere, all the time," Lozano said proudly. But it wasn't the album that pulled them in. "We booked all of the tour before the CD was out," he said. "Bill Evans is our passport to all these people."
It's not hard to understand the appeal. Along with Miles Davis, with whom he recorded, Evans has become one of the most recognizable "brands" in jazz, one that speaks to melodic sophistication and a more European approach to improvisation. He was also a bit of a tragic figure, a shy, soft-spoken man who beat a long-term heroin problem only to become addicted to cocaine. His death, at 51, was attributed to bleeding ulcers, cirrhosis of the liver and bronchial pneumonia.
Evans's status as a jazz giant was cemented in 1959, when he was asked to join Davis's band for the recording of Kind of Blue (he also wrote the liner notes). Davis, who was not famous for gushing, said of Evans, "He plays piano the way it should be played."At their best, Evans's recordings have the feel of classics, while his approach remains close enough to contemporary notions of mainstream jazz that his music doesn't seem dated, the way recordings by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, or Charlie Parker can. His influence resonates in the sound of such contemporary jazz pianists as Brad Mehldau, Fred Hersch, Bill Charlap and Eliane Elias.
Further, even though he made a few records with some fairly revolutionary figures, there's nothing particularly "outside" about Evans's catalogue (which is definitely not the case with figures such as Davis, John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman). Indeed, much of his work can be fairly defined as pretty, and a few albums – particularly his two collaborations with Tony Bennett – almost verge on a pop sensibility.
Jazz musicians tend to love Evans's work for slightly different reasons. Start with his sense of harmony. A dedicated student of Debussy and Ravel, Evans admired the tonal ambiguity the impressionist composers brought to their lushly harmonized compositions. He was also a student of jazz theorist George Russell, whose modal technique based improvisation on scales instead of chords, and that side of his playing was a key influence in the creation of Kind of Blue.
Eight months after those sessions with Davis, Evans formed a trio with Motian and bassist Scott LaFaro, and the musical dynamic this group embodied changed the very concept of the piano trio. Where previously the bass and drums took essentially supportive roles, Evans's group operated as equals, with LaFaro's bass offering melodic counterpoint instead of mere time-keeping.
That's the most obvious debt in Corea's Further Explorations. Drawn from a series of concerts in 2010, the album – which includes tunes associated with Evans as well as a smattering of originals – offers Evans-style interplay as Corea, Motian and (particularly) Gomez play off each other's ideas. Although it would be difficult to imagine Evans sounding the way Corea does on Another Tango, the collaborative approach of the playing owes everything to Evans.
But then, that's the interesting thing about these tributes – they're less interested in sounding like Evans than in building on the lessons his work offered. As Lozano put it, on Autour de Bill Evans, "we're doing Bill Evans's music, but we're doing it in our own way." And when you get down to it, that's what Evans did, as well.
ESSENTIAL EVANS TUNES
Here are three of the best-known tunes Bill Evans composed.
Waltz for Debby Easily the most famous of Evans's compositions, this tune – inspired by his niece – first appeared on his 1956 debut record, New Jazz Conceptions. It is sometimes performed as a vocal number, with lyrics by Canadian Gene Lees; Evans recorded it with Tony Bennett on The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album in 1975. This version was recorded with bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Larry Bunker in 1965 for the British television program Jazz 625.
Streaming here.
Turn Out the Stars This gorgeous, harmonically rich ballad first surfaced on the 1966 album Bill Evans at Town Hall, as well as on Intermodulation, a duet album from the same year with guitarist Jim Hall. It has become one of Evans's most covered jazz compositions. This version was recorded with his final trio, featuring bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbera, in 1979, a year before Evans's death.
Streaming here.
Blue in Green Although original copies of the Kind of Blue album listed Miles Davis as the author, Evans later said that he wrote the tune based on two chords suggested by Davis, and subsequent issues of the album credits both. An inventive exercise in modality, it is an oft-performed jazz standard. This is the version from Kind of Blue, featuring Davis on trumpet, Evans on piano, Julian (Cannonball) Adderley on alto saxophone, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums.
Streaming here.