sgcim

Look man, just sell me all your Dick Katz and Davey Schildkraut records/CDs I don't have, and we'll call it a day!

Great album!

Very sad to hear. Loved his playing on The Quest, but I haven't heard it for many years, since I loaned it to my cousin, and he liked it so much, he didn't want to return the vinyl! RIP, Mr. Persip...

One of the greats. Loved his group with Dick Morrissey, Perfect Pitch. Another great loss for jazz. RIP, Mr. King. https://londonjazznews.com/2020/08/24/rip-peter-king-1940-2020/

It's the only Bill Evans recording where there's no flow to his usual great improvisations. It doesn't surprise me that the trio hated the album.

It's not the painting, it's the music it reminds me of.

That makes sense, Trio 64 is a horrible album. Just looking at the album cover makes me sick, Regardless of what CT put Evans through on Trio '65, and what JS says, Trio '65 contained some classic Earl Zindars tunes, and fine performances by the Trio.

You can pretty much tell where Creed Taylor was at by reading Mel Lewis' autobiography "The View From the Back of the Band". I mentioned the story with him defending a drunk, abusive Stan Getz during the recording session for the Getz album "Relaxin;" in my review of the book, so I won't go into that, but Mel first went to Creed when he wanted to find a record company for the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band. Creed said, "It's great, but I don't want anything to do with it." He then went on with words to the effect that nobody wanted to hear a big band with long solos, complex arrangements, etc... I can imagine what Creed put Bill Evans through on the "Trio '65" album. Evans was strongly anti-commercial in his feelings about jazz. Time and again, you can read interviews he did in the 60s about jazz musicians selling out by playing jazz mixed with rock music, and on more than one occasion said he was very disappointed with Miles Davis' fusion direction, and wanted to speak to Miles about that. I could imagine what that would've been like! Scott's playing was very disappointing on those albums with Evans, and I much prefer his playing on the quartet he had with Dick Katz, and his playing on "Both Sides of Tony Scott, with the great Dick Garcia on one side, and the comparatively weak soloing of Mundell Lowe on the other side. Both records are free of the hysterics Scott sometimes got into in the high register, and other 'flag-waving' techniques which marred his playing.

Yes, the cut that David played on his show from Guys and Dolls Like Vibes (If I Were a Bell) had a great Bill solo on it. Eddie's vibes solo was weird; he kept playing the same riff over and over so loud that I couldn't even hear the changes under it. Evans did undergo a significant change in his playing, and I prefer the earlier playing to some of his later playing, but the sheer volume of recorded Evans makes it hard to draw a fine line between the two periods.It almost seems like his playing as a sideman with people like George Russell, Oliver Nelson, Cannonball Adderly, and the groups with Freddie Hubbard, Zoot Sims, Jim Hall, Hal McKusick, Art Farmer, etc... brought out that first style of playing. His son believes that he was aiming for a different type of music, that was an improvised type of classical/jazz music, but superior to both of them!

Another great show, David! Hopefully Larry and Jim will listen to both this show and your upcoming show on Miles and Bill, and repent for their sins regarding the great BILL EVANS! Well, maybe Larry, I think after his last posts, JS is pretty much beyond redemption concerning Evans... It should be noted that George Russell thought so highly of Bill that he transcribed Bill's solo in "All About Rosie", and included it in the published score of All About Rosie, probably the first time that was ever done, Russell even made a note of it in the score I studied.

That's very sad to hear. He was a real fixture here in NY back in the day. He taught a lot of tenor players I've played with, and some even played in that big band with him on Lawnguyland when they were still in high school. One guy I knew even lived with him for a few years. He was a musical genius; you could play him some Sonny Rollins record, and he could write out the tenor solo, without a horn, after just listening to it ONCE!!!! According to all the tenor players that knew him, he wasn't really into that stuff he played with Miles and Elvin; his heart was into the real stuff- BOP. There are some monster tenor players former students of his out there, who are going to be really broken up about this, but some of them picked up some bad 'habits' from him, so maybe that would temper their feelings a bit... One funny story I heard from one tenor player who caught him live somewhere was that SG saw the guy digging his playing, so SG asked him if he was a tenor player, and wanted to take lessons with him. The guy said, "Yeah!" So Steve said to him, "Okay give me $60 right now, and we'll have the lesson sometime soon". RIP, to a true musical genius.

Yes, I remember you mentioning that time you saw Farlow. You must have gotten lucky. Every time I saw him, or heard any of his post-1960 recordings, he didn't sound anywhere near the level he was playing at in the 50s, which I still believe represents the highest level of bop playing on the guitar (especially the recordings with Costa). Something was interfering with the timing between his picking and fingering in his post 1960s playing, and people that were close to him inferred that it had something to do with alcohol. He came to hear me playing at a club, and we went out to breakfast afterward (I still have the receipt), and he seemed like a quiet, humble person. In Evans' case, he was mainlining cocaine, and according to one of his ex-students, who visited him at the hospital, he wanted to die.

It is unfortunate that some jazz musicians stay on long after they should have stopped playing (in Evans' case, he probably should have been locked up in a 24/7 rehab hospital for a year or two), in some cases, like Evans for a couple of years, in other cases, like Tal Farlow, after 1959, in Phil Woods' case, after he had to carry around an oxygen tank with him, etc.., but some of them have to eat, some of them (like Evans) seem to have a death drive, while others (Woods) have some type of 'dream' they must fulfill.

Bob Rose, the guitarist from Philadelphia who played on the two Pat Martino albums mentioned above, just passed away at the age of 82, after a battle with lung cancer and COPD When I bought "The Visit" on vinyl as a kiddie, I imagined that he was this very serious professional guitarist. When I was working at a big theater in NY as part of the house pit band, I always asked the guys in the band, who the touring acts used on guitar when brought their own rhythm section. One time it was Bob Rose, and I thought that was so cool. He was a freelance jazz/commercial/studio player, who played in many different genres. He was the guitarist on the "Twin Peaks" theme, as well as playing with Todd Rundgren, and many other artists of all varieties. Here is a great interview with him. he seemed like he would've been a great hang! https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/rip-bob-rose-rhythm-guitar-player-for-pat-martino.2174987/#post-3102023 Being a professional musician all his life, in addition to trying to run a recording studio, which he wound up losing all his investment in (which he explains on the tape), the illness left him broke, so if you want to donate a few bucks to help pay for his burial, here's a GOFUNDME link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/bobby-rose-medical-fund

I'd love to hear it! I just finished a big band arr. of "ITTTW", but the three big bands I play in won't be playing anytime soon.

There's no doubt that when Evans was addicted to cocaine, he rushed the tempo, and he and PJJ were probably snorting together. As GOM quoted the review of the 'album' "I Love You" came from, " It is not a good recording technically with noticeable drop outs, thud-like drums, crashing cymbals, and muffled bass. Also, the re-mastering seems to have overlooked the need for concert A-440 pitch - everything seems sharp". I don't listen to any of Evans' bootleg albums, because they weren't intended for release. Probably if Evans was alive to listen to them, he would have not allowed their release.

Yes, "An Unsung Cat" is a great study of Warne's music. You're not going to get much from a novel.

You're right, I could have been clearer. Evans studied with Tristano, so he might agree with you. It's hard to say, "I prefer X to Y in terms of a jazz pianist's career. They go through different periods, as with Costa. At one time I loved the "Eddie Costa Trio album on Jubilee, but now I find it kind of predictable compared to his later period, consisting of "House of Blue Lights" the Shelly Manne album, etc... Evans had a much longer career, and I prefer certain periods to other periods. The last time he played at the VV, I had no idea what he was doing with his complex time/harmonic displacements, but further listening to it afforded clearer understanding and enjoyment of what he was doing. They're all available on Pro Quest. I would go with the last study, just on the basis that I used to gig with the author's husband, and he was a real PITA. Here's some info on the last study: An analysis of Bill Evans' approach to playing the melody of selected jazz ballads Cankaya, M. I. Can. The William Paterson University of New Jersey, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2009. 1465725. PDFDownload PDF CiteCite Email PrintAll Options

Or this: This study sought to identify the contributions made to the jazz medium by pianist Bill Evans, through the musical analysis of selected solo performances and an investigation of his life, career, and recorded output. The biographical account of Bill Evans' life focused on his musical training and the development of his musical style. The evolution of his career was documented, as were the events which affected his life and the people with whom he associated. Through an examination of Evans' recorded output, many aspects of his musical preferences were revealed, such as the musical settings in which he liked to perform, the nature of his repertoire, and the rhythmic and tonal structure of his musical arrangements. The discussion of his discography was supplemented by the critical reviews that accompanied the release of his recordings in order to illustrate the high regard in which he was held. Based on the data concerning the composition of Evans' musical arrangements, four representative piano solos were selected for analysis, three of which were subsequently transcribed by the researcher. The style analyses utilized techniques drawn from the analytic methods of Jan LaRue, Jerry Coker, and Heinrich Schenker. Conclusions drawn from the style analyses provided the basis for a pedagogical guide through which the stylistic characteristics of Bill Evans' musical style may be applied to the teaching of jazz piano. The outcomes suggested that although Bill Evans was traditional in his approach to jazz, he was also innovative. He drew from many sources, using existing jazz materials as the basis of his style, and building upon them to create something new. His contributions to the jazz piano style were manifested in his development of various types of open and close chord voicings, his skillful use of harmonic substitutions and quartal harmonies, his extensive use of motivic development, and the application of both rhythmic displacement and polyrhythmic concepts. More Details Subject Music education; Music; Biographies Classification 0522: Music education 0413: Music 0304: Biographies Identifier / keyword Communication and the arts; Education; Language, literature and linguistics; Evans, Bill Title Bill Evans: His contributions as a jazz pianist and an analysis of his musical style Author Berardinelli, Paula Number of pages 351 Publication year 1992 Degree date Or this: This thesis shows Bill Evans' approach to playing the melody on jazz ballads. Understanding Evans' specific contributions to the jazz piano literature through the interpretation of jazz ballad melodies is important for jazz musicians who study modern jazz piano. Yet, this aspect of his playing is under-analyzed in the analytical literature about Evans' piano style. For this study, four of Evans' interpretations of standard jazz ballads were selected for analysis from the album Alone. These were: "Here's That Rainy Day," "A Time for Love" "Never Let Me Go," and "On A Clear Day (You Can See Forever)". Devices Evans used for the interpretation of the original melodies were: Diminution and augmentations, rhythmic displacements, drop voicings, inner lines, rubato, substitute chords, voice leading, chord anticipations, fills, chromatic approach chords, left hand lines, melody with thirds, fourths, fifths and sixths, contrary motion and use of changing key centers. Evans effectively combined all of these devices together to produce his own original, significant, and influential solo piano style. 1992

Bill Evans' music is so deep and layered, a friend of mine has devoted his life to studying, transcribing and analyzing his improvisational idea since the age of eleven. He's now 66, and is still working at it. Before the pandemic, he was working on doing a stint as a guest lecturer at The Bill Evans Piano Institute in Paris, France. As far as the specifics of his musical thought, you might want to look at studies such as this. You might still hate him, but at least you'd have a better idea of why you hate him Patterns have a long and deep history in the tradition of improvisation. Jazz musicians often use the tonal frameworks of tunes from the Great American Songbook as plans for their improvisations. On top of these tonal plans, players may draw from a set of memorized licks. The present study mediates between these two levels of structure by codifying specific melodic frameworks at the level of the phrase in the solos of jazz pianist Bill Evans. Analyses show that Evans utilized the same melodic frameworks in different performances, but used them to create new melodic lines. These frameworks provide specific ways of navigating the voice-leading strands of a tune, often referred to as guide tones in the study of jazz harmony. At the same time, they allow the performer the flexibility and freedom to create new melodic material in each performance, since they can be elaborated in different ways. Although Evans left no extant descriptions of his own structural models for many of the tunes he played, his repeated performances of certain tunes throughout his career offer a way to determine the melodic models used in his solos. The present study compares different performances of the same tune with one another, as a performance family, codifying melodic frameworks that occur across each set of performances. In addition, since many of the underlying phrase models of standard tunes occur across the repertoire, comparisons can be made between Evans's performances of different tunes. Wherever the fixed aspects can be understood as governing the variable aspects, the fixed elements can be conceived as structural frames for the solo. Acknowledging the existence of such cross-performance structures provides insight into one kind of knowledge that a player can have when approaching a jazz performance, and aligns with the study of expert behavior by cognitive psychologists. At the same time, positing such structures blurs the traditional distinction between composition and improvisation. In Evans's case, comparing multiple performances of the same tune provides one way to distinguish learned from improvised behavior, illuminating a level of invariant structure that mediates between the global tonal plan and local licks. Since they exist at the level of the phrase and are neither as general as a tonal plan nor as succinct as licks, these melodic frameworks can be useful in jazz pedagogy as a fruitful starting point for aspiring improvisers. Less

Hindemith's "Craft of Musical Composition" books were pretty stupid, but when the American composer John Cacavas studied with him privately, he said to Hindemith, "Maestro, I worked through all of your 'Craft' books, but they don't show me how to compose music on the level of Mathis der Maler, The Four Temperments, The Viola Concerto, etc.... Hindemith answered him with words to the effect of, "Do you really think I'd reveal the secrets of my greatest works for a puny four dollar book?" Hold a seance, and ask Glenn Gould what he thought of Hindemith's music.

I was talking pianists.

I can only answer the first part of that by quoting Hindemith: "We only have twelve tones in music, therefore we must be very careful about how we use those twelve tones" (or something to that effect). As for the second part, maybe Evans was thinking about the excesses of Lizst. All I know is that I love Russell's early music, and then he reached a point where it was too blobby and sloppy and messy for me. YMMV.

Yes, and he was able to play the "bejeezus" out of it without any influence of George Russell at all. That kind of destroys Jim's theory about there would be no Bill Evans without George Russell. Like Phil Woods ( another great player I've had to 'defend' against you and Jim) Bill Evans was a composer/arranger's dream. He could sight read anything (Evans' ability to sight read Babbitt's "All Set" complete with dynamics and articulations(!) amazed Gunther Schuller to such an extent, that he used Evans on some of his Third-Stream performances and recordings), and then enhance the piece to such an extent through his own tasteful contributions, that the piece becomes something greater than it would be had the arr./composer hired anyone else. On top of all that, Evans would bring an improvisational genius that was unequaled during his time. I was surprised to recently read that it was Evans' changes that Sheila Jordan used on "If You Could See Me Now" on her recording with Barry Galbraith and Steve Swallow, and not George Russell's, as it was assumed. Evans jotted down the changes on a book of matches for her. Oh yeah, I'm sure you're gonna find a lot of jazz fans that prefer JG + PB over MD + BE. Read Larry's quoting of the first meeting of Evans and Russell.

As much as I love George Russell's EARLY music, none of it sounds like KOB. If you read both of their biographies, especially GR's, you'd know that GR's great early works (IMHO) were NOT informed by his LCC, but by the European 20th Century composers, whose scores he studied at the time. This is explicitly stated in the Russell biography. By the same token, Bill Evans' remarkable sight reading ability allowed him access to the modal music of numerous composers (not just Ravel and Debussy), and his close friend Glenn Gould, called Evans "The Scriabin of Jazz". To ignore Evans' monumental contributions to the harmonic materials of KOB, and suggest that Russell was the main influence on KOB is to ignore all the facts about the session: 1) Davis could NOT do the music he wanted to do on KOB without Evans. Garland and Kelley did not have the harmonic background Evans had absorbed from the countless scores he read through in his practice sessions. Tony Scott even mentioned that he was hanging around Evans' apartment one day, and heard Satie (whose harmony is as strong an influence on KOB as Debussy and Ravel) being played for the first time by Evans. 2) Garland and Kelley did not have the touch that Evans had to perform the type of music on KOB that differentiates itself from Miles' previous work. 3) Each musician brought their own thing to the performances, and most were first takes. This means that all the harmonic things were entirely Evans' own, and Miles claimed credit for Blue in Green and Flamenco Sketches which, according to the great American composer Earl Zindars, Evans played long before KOB 4) Just because Russell showed Davis what a mode was one night for ten minutes, does not mean he had much to do with KOB 5) Evans' work with Russell did not produce music that sounded anything like KOB. I remember loaning a PHD musician who loved KOB, my fave album at the time, Geo. Russell's "Jazz Workshop" and he returned it in disgust saying that he hated that type of music and it doesn't sound anything like KOB. 6) Paul Bley's non-free playing had nowhere near the harmonic vocabulary that Evans had, especially at that time, Evans understood what Bley was doing during their free duet on Russell's Living Time, but said it was not for him, because playing free is taking the easy way out regarding jazz improvisation.Thank God that Russell chose Bley for his LCC music, and Evans for his early music recordings. Evans still did those two, IMHO, tasteless later Russell record dates, but it was more out of friendship than for musical reasons. Friends of mine who went to NEC back in the 80s said most of the students ridiculed Russell and his LCC music, behind his back.