William John Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer who worked primarily as the leader of his trio. His extensive use of impressionist harmony, block chords, innovative chord voicings, and trademark rhythmically independent "singing" melodic lines continue to influence jazz pianists today.
Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Evans studied classical music at Southeastern Louisiana College and the Mannes School of Music, in New York City, where he majored in composition and received an artist diploma. In 1955, he moved to New York City, where he worked with bandleader and theorist George Russell. In 1958, Evans joined Miles Davis's sextet, which in 1959, then immersed in modal jazz, recorded Kind of Blue, the best-selling jazz album of all time.
Biography
Early life
Evans grew up in North Plainfield, New Jersey, the son of Harry and Mary Evans (). His father was of Welsh descent and ran a golf course; his mother was of Rusyn ancestry and descended from a family of coal miners. The marriage was stormy because of his father's heavy drinking, gambling, and abuse. Bill had a brother, Harry (Harold), two years his senior, to whom he was very close. Evans attended North Plainfield High School, graduating in 1946.
College, army, sabbatical year
In July 1958, Evans appeared as a sideman on Adderley's album Portrait of Cannonball, featuring the first performance of "Nardis", specially written by Davis for the session. While Davis was not very satisfied with the performance, he said that from then on, Evans was the only one to play it in the way he wanted. The piece came to be associated with Evans's future trios, which played it frequently.
As usual, during the sessions of Kind of Blue, Davis called for almost no rehearsal and the musicians had little idea what they were to record. Davis had given the band only sketches of scales and melody lines on which to improvise. Once the musicians were assembled, Davis gave brief instructions for each piece and then set about taping the sextet in studio. Evans also wrote the liner notes for Kind of Blue, comparing jazz improvisation to Japanese visual art. By the fall of 1959, Evans had started his own trio with Jimmy Garrison and Kenny Dennis, but it was short-lived. LaFaro expressed interest in forming a trio, and suggested Paul Motian, who had appeared on Evans's album New Jazz Conceptions, as the drummer. Evans later showed special satisfaction with these recordings, seeing them as the culmination of his trio's musical interplay.
Evans's heroin addiction worsened after LaFaro's death. His girlfriend Ellaine Schultz was also an addict. Evans habitually borrowed money from friends, and eventually his electricity and telephone services were shut down. He said: "You don't understand. It's like death and transfiguration. Every day you wake in pain like death and then you go out and score, and that is transfiguration. Each day becomes all of life in microcosm."
Evans never allowed heroin to interfere with his musical discipline, according to a 2010 BBC article that contrasts his addiction with Chet Baker's. On one occasion while injecting heroin, Evans hit a nerve and temporarily disabled it, performing a full week's engagement at the Village Vanguard virtually one-handed.
In 1973, while working in Redondo Beach, California, Evans met and fell in love with Nenette Zazzara, despite his long-term relationship with Schultz.
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During the mid-1970s Evans collaborated with the singer Tony Bennett on two critically acclaimed albums: The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album (1975) and Together Again (1977). Bennett initiated the collaboration. The two respected each other's talent, and performed together for about two years. Although Evans was using cocaine regularly during this period, he was reportedly sober when recording the albums with Bennett.
Marc Johnson recalled: "This fateful trip marks ... the beginning of the end. Bill's willingness to play and work decreased noticeably after the death of Harry, actually it was just the music itself that held him upright. He fulfilled his obligations because he needed money, but these were the few moments in his life when he felt comfortable—the times in between must have been depressing, and he barely showed a willingness to live." A tribute, planned by producer Orrin Keepnews and Tom Bradshaw, was held on September 22 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Fellow musicians paid homage to Evans in the first days of the 1980 Monterey Jazz Festival, which opened that week: Dave Brubeck played his own "In Your Own Sweet Way" on the 19th, The Manhattan Transfer followed on the 20th, and John Lewis dedicated "I'll Remember April". In 1981, Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays released the piece "September Fifteenth (dedicated to Bill Evans)" on their album As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls.
Music and style
thumb|Evans is credited as creating some new harmonies, like the quartal voicing [[Mark Levine (musician)|Mark Levine calls "So What" chord; first appearing in the opening track of Kind of Blue.]]
thumb|right|A [[Viennese trichord as a part of 6-Z17, an altered dominant tritone substitution (Db7alt) in the key of C, from Evans's opening to "What Is This Thing Called Love?" .]]
Evans is credited with influencing the harmonic language of jazz piano. and Maurice Ravel. His versions of jazz standards, as well as his own compositions, often feature thorough reharmonizations. Other features include added tone chords, modal inflections, unconventional substitutions, and modulations.thumb|center|500px|The first line of "[[Time Remembered", as penned by Evans in the early 1970s.]]
At least during his late years, Evans's favorite keys to play in were A and E.
Influences
In a 1964 interview, Evans called Bud Powell his single greatest influence. Biographer Peter Pettinger notes that Evans "assimilated 'a thousand influences'", including pianists Dave Brubeck, George Shearing, Oscar Peterson, Al Haig, and Lou Levy, and horn players Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Stan Getz. "The biggest influence on Evans [in his early days], though, was the pianism of Nat 'King' Cole", whom Evans called "one of the tastiest and just swingin'est and beautifully melodic improvisers and jazz pianists that jazz has ever known, and he was one of the very first that really grabbed me hard." Pettinger also notes that the "work of the pianist Lennie Tristano, with his cool approach to a line" was an important influence on Evans, and Lyons observes that Tristano preceded Evans in his use of overdubbing piano tracks. Evans was also heavily influenced by his deep studies of European classical music: "The constructional knowledge of music that Evans later brought to jazz was firmly rooted in this European tradition, as was his thoroughly trained and exquisitely refined touch at the keyboard."
As a composer, Evans also assimilated and amalgamated jazz, popular, and classical influences in an "utterly logical" manner. His compositional style shows similarities to and the influence of some of the composers whose works he often played, such as Earl Zindars and Michel Legrand. J. William Murray wrote, "Evans was very adept at drawing Western European compositional techniques into jazz and there are elements of Bach, Chopin, Debussy, and Ravel in his writing."
Views on contemporaneous music tendencies
Evans's career began just before the rock explosion in the 1960s. During this decade, jazz was swept into a corner, and most new talents had few opportunities to gain recognition, especially in America. Evans believed he had been lucky to gain exposure before this profound change in the music world, and never had problems gaining bookings and recording opportunities.
Evans never embraced new music movements; he kept his style intact. For example, he lamented watching Davis shift his style towards jazz fusion and blamed the change on commercial considerations. Evans said, "I would like to hear more of the consummate melodic master [Davis], but I feel that big business and his record company have had a corrupting influence on his material. The rock and pop thing certainly draws a wider audience. It happens more and more these days, that unqualified people with executive positions try to tell musicians what is good and what is bad music."
Evans composed more than 50 originals. Many were dedicated to people close to him, including "Waltz for Debby" for his niece; "For Nenette" for his wife; "Letter to Evan" for his son; "NYC's No Lark", an anagram of Sonny Clark in memory of the pianist; "Re: Person I Knew", an anagram of Orrin Keepnews; "We Will Meet Again" for his brother; "Peri's Scope" for Peri Cousins; "One for Helen" and "Song for Helen" for Helen Keane; "B minor Waltz (For Ellaine)" for Ellaine Schultz; "Laurie" for Laurie Verchomin; "Yet Ne'er Broken", an anagram of cocaine dealer Robert Kenney; "Maxine" for his stepdaughter; "Tiffany" for Joe LaBarbera's daughter; and "Knit For Mary F." for fan Mary Franksen from Omaha.
Personal life
Evans was an avid reader, particularly of philosophy and humor. His shelves held works by Plato, Voltaire, Whitehead, Santayana, Freud, Margaret Mead, Sartre, and Thomas Merton and he had a special fondness for Thomas Hardy's work. He was fascinated with Eastern religions and philosophies including Islam, Zen, and Buddhism. Evans introduced John Coltrane to the philosophy of Krishnamurti.
Reception
thumb|right|Evans in [[Helsinki in 1964.]]
Music critic Richard S. Ginell wrote: "With the passage of time, Bill Evans has become an entire school unto himself for pianists and a singular mood unto himself for listeners. There is no more influential jazz-oriented pianist—only McCoy Tyner exerts nearly as much pull among younger players and journeymen."
During his short tenure with Davis in 1958, when the band left New York to go on the road, Evans sometimes received cold receptions from the mostly black audiences. Evans later acknowledged that some felt his presence threatened the black pride aspect of Davis's band's success. Pettinger believed in a recording, for his solo on a tune named "Walkin'", Evans received noticeably less applause than the other soloists, and for that on "All Of You", none at all. Davis and the other band members responded, "he's supposed to be there, Miles wants him there", on the bandstand whenever audience members made comments. Evans has left his mark on such players as Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Paul Bley, Keith Jarrett, Steve Kuhn, Warren Bernhardt, Michel Petrucciani, John Taylor, Vince Guaraldi, Stefano Bollani, Don Friedman, Marian McPartland, Denny Zeitlin, Bobo Stenson, Fred Hersch, Frank Kimbrough, Bill Charlap, Lyle Mays, Eliane Elias, Diana Krall, Ralph Towner, John McLaughlin, Lenny Breau, Rick Wright of Pink Floyd, Denis Matsuev, and many other musicians in jazz and other music genres. His recordings have been transcribed and arranged by Jed Distler and others and recorded by classical musicians such as the Kronos Quartet, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Roy Eaton, and Igor Levit.
Evans's style has also influenced some contemporary classical composers. The English composer Gavin Bryars wrote "My First Homage" in 1978 "to Bill Evans," the composer explained, "and, more particularly, to the trio that he had from 1959-1961," which "affected me deeply when I first began playing jazz seriously." Bryars also notes that the title of the piece "uses the same initials as ... 'My Foolish Heart'." The 15-minute work is scored principally for two pianos but also for two vibraphones, tuba, and sizzle cymbal and was recorded by Bryars and others in February 1981, shortly after Evans's death.
The noted Hungarian composer György Ligeti admired Evans and acknowledged his influence in an interview, adding, "As far as touch is concerned, Bill Evans is a sort of Michelangeli of jazz" (in reference to the great classical pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli). Ligeti's Fifth Piano Étude (1985), subtitled "Arc-en-ciel" ("Rainbow"), demonstrates this influence clearly, and Ligeti even hand-wrote in the margin of the score, "Play it like Bill Evans." Likewise, American minimalist composer and keyboardist Terry Riley included Evans in "the Pantheon of my teachers and heroes" in the liner notes to his solo piano Lisbon Concert. In 2025, composer John Williams premiered a Piano Concerto, the second movement of which is modeled on Evans's style.
Many of Evans's own compositions, such as "Waltz for Debby", "Peace Piece", "Blue in Green", "Very Early", "Time Remembered", "Turn Out the Stars", "We Will Meet Again", and "Funkallero", have become oft-recorded jazz standards, and his early death inspired the composition of two widely covered tribute songs, Phil Woods's "Goodbye, Mr. Evans" and Don Sebesky's "I Remember Bill".
During his lifetime, Evans received 31 Grammy nominations and seven Awards.
The Bill Evans Jazz Festival at Southeastern Louisiana University began in 2002. A Bill Evans painting hangs in the Recital Hall lobby of the Department of Music and Performing Arts. The Center for Southeastern Louisiana Studies at the Simms Library holds the Bill Evans archives. He was named Outstanding Alumnus of the year in 1969.
Evans influenced the character Seb's wardrobe in the 2016 film La La Land.
Discography
Tribute albums
Notes
References
External links
- Bill Evans Official Website
- Bill Evans entry — Jazz Discography Project
- "Remembering Bill Evans" by Ted Gioia, Jazz.com, January 2008.
- Bill Evans Musical Style at Jazz-Piano.org
- "Bill Evans: Twelve Essential Recordings by Ted Gioia"
- The Bill Evans Memorial Library
- Jazz wax-Interview with Laurie Verchomin
- Bill Evans Time Remembered documentary film
- Maxine Evans, daughter of Bill Evans