Send "Bill Evans " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Playing jazz on a piano means many different things. From ragtime to stride to darting bebop to atonal clusters, “jazz piano” means many things. Ellington and Garner and Tatum and Monk are as unmistakable as Wilt and Clyde and Bird and Jordan.Among the many singular jazz pianists, Bill Evans is super-singular. His touch, his impressionist harmonies, his lyricism, and his rhythmic approach had relatively little precedent when Evans arrived on the scene in the late 1950s. And while virtually every jazz pianist since has been influenced by Evans, his own recordings remain utterly identifiable. Often copied, sure, but still one of a kind. The Sesjun Radio Shows offers us 19 previously unreleased tracks by Evans—five in duet with bassist Eddie Gomez, five more adding Eliot Zigmund on drums, four featuring his final trio with Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbara, and five more that add harmonica great Toots Thielemans to that band. Any concern that, as radio broadcasts, these are low fidelity recordings needs to be tossed aside. The monotone covers from this series do not indicate any cheapness on the inside. The bands are captured beautifully. The 1973 duets are crystal clear and rich, with Gomez singing beautifully in tone and Evans striking both clear and gently in his unmistakable attack. ““The Two Lonely People” is an Evans original that seems as good a summary of his art as any. Evans’ piano intro is masterful, but when Gomez enters in support he seems to be playing a critical melodic role, improvising lines against the leader’s that are every bit as gorgeous as the “lead” improvisation....full text |
| Allaboutjazz |
| Pianist Bill Evans (b. 1929, d. 1980) changed the way of the piano trio, beginning with a handful of brilliant studio recording for Riverside Records in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A pair of live recordings for the label, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby, both released in 1961, cemented his reputation as a genius and agent of change. Evan's pioneered a trio approach that favored more equality in instrumental input. In his late 1950s and early 1960s trio, it was bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian joining the pianist. La Faro's death in a car crash shortly after the recording of the two live albums resulted in a "what might have been" lament, but Evans forged on, releasing always good and sometimes great albums over the years with several different trios that never, in the minds of many, achieved the level of creativity and innovation of the Evans/La Faro/Motian team. This perception may be, in part, true; once that innovative leap was made, nothing afterward seemed so daringly fresh. But building on the initial evolutionary leap, the best of Evans' later work sparkled with breathtaking beauty and unsurpassed harmonic depth melded to his exquisitely crisp, crystalline touch and adept feel for melodies perfectly suited to his style. The Sesjun Radio Shows was recorded live for the Dutch Radio show, Tros Sesjun. The double CD set features late-period Evans in duo, trio and quartet dates. The duo tunes team Evans with bassist Eddie Gomez. Recorded in 1973, the telepathic intimacy between the two players was obvious as they covered familiar music from Evans' songbook, including "Time Remembered," "The Two Lonely People" and Leonard Bernstein's gorgeous and wistful "Some Other Time."...full text |
| Acousticmusic |
| Of course it would be Glenn Gould who'd cast Bill Evans most appropriately as "the Scriabin of jazz"; leave it to a maverick classicalist to beat jazzbo crits at their own game. Gene Lees called him a Chopin, and more than one of Evans' works were highly synchronous with a revved-up polonaise or two. Hancock, Corea, and Jarrett were highly influenced by the genius, and his legion of fans were like religious zealots. Thus, this third in the Sesjun series vividly demonstrates the bias for all the adulation…but, underneath the sonic bliss lies a tale of tragedy. Like many a transcendent soul, Evans found life on Earth rough, and he, as many, took to heroin as a method of coping. Early on, he and Scott LeFaro were divinely matched but not altogether at ease with one another due to LeFaro's detestation of Evans' habit. At 25, Scott was killed in a car accident, and it devastated Bill, nor was he able to find another ingenious bassist until Eddie Gomez entered the picture at an equally young age: 22. Heard on the entirety of the first disc here, one easily sees why Gomez's free-style approach appealed to the pianist, who needed a fluid contrast and counterpoint. Catch all the solos exchanges and organic interplay in TTT alone, and little more need be said. But heroin, which Evans regarded as a daily death and transfiguration experience, took its toll, so he eventually gave over the entire scene, moved back with his parents, kicked horse, and had a few good years…until former wife Ellaine threw herself under a subway train, to later be followed by beloved brother Harry Evans, suffering from depression, also committing suicide. Bill therein thoroughly lost the will to live, dying a year later at age 51. Don't ever let anyone tell you that genius is unaccompanied by tragedy; the reverse is almost always the case. But the celebration of life and unbridled creativity in Evans' luminous work is the exact opposite of his private hell, a glowing testament to a fertile mind never at rest—and Evans ever felt restive away from a piano. More, the jawdropping ease with which the man could abruptly but smoothly change up everything (tempo, volume, direction, you name it) was indicative of his desire to transcend norms and travel elsewhere…not, we may wish to note, unlike Stan Kenton but with far more homogeneity in trad jazz and classical rudiments (Kenton the neoclassicalist in such matters). As with all the Sesjun concerts, the audience here is into it deeply, and one would not have been surprised to have heard the show interrupted several times in order that the maestro be paraded on a gold palanquin through the streets before any allowance to carry on. This release, I needn't point out, is severely cerebral music, demanding complete rapt attention or, I'm warning you, don't even start on the twofer set. When done, though, you'll understand that a zen dharma transmission occurred between one god, Evans, and another, Jarrett, and, though we may not even know it yet, we're waiting anxiously for the next successor, for the line to be continued....full text |
Bill Evans lyrics
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