Bill Evans

August 01, 2023

Bill Evans

I was introduced to the music of Bill Evans in 1981, less than a year after he died way too soon at the age of 51.

Since then, he has been almost a guiding force in my work. I don't listen to a lot of jazz anymore, but I always have some of Bill's records in rotation. For me, he is in a category of his own. No other jazz pianist sounds like him. No one else had his concept of what a trio could be. His melding of so many influences into his playing, including French impressionistic harmonic concepts, is uniquely his own.

My sense of Bill's playing is that he was likely more influenced by classical composers than any other jazz pianist. His playing is deep; I hear new things in his recordings quite frequently. And these are records to which I've been listening literally for decades.

I feel indebted to him; grateful for all he did. Both his playing and his composing. His writing was as intense and as deep as his playing. Grateful for his courage to take jazz piano in a new direction; for staying true to his own voice.

Bill's recording career spanned about 24 years. His recorded output during that time was prolific; he left quite a recorded legacy for us.

Over the past few years, there have been new album releases from him. These are from recordings that were recently discovered, but had been lost or forgotten over the years. It's like he's still here.

Even if it weren't for the new albums, I would still feel as if he's still here. The indelible influence he's had on me, and the sheer impact of it all almost makes me feel as if I knew him on some level.

If you don't know his work, I'd recommend any of his trio recordings with either Scott LaFaro, Eddie Gomez, or Marc Johnson on bass; there are some links at the bottom of this page. Bill always worked with some of the greatest virtuoso jazz bassists in history. In his music, the bass was not relegated to the usual jazz bass tasks of timekeeping and laying out the roots of chords on downbeats. The bass was equal to the piano in his work. That was a totally original concept at the time, and still sounds fresh and new today.

"I think having one's own sound in a sense is the most fundamental kind of identity in music. But it's a very touchy thing how one arrives at that. It has to be something that comes from inside, and it's a long-term process. It's a product of a total personality."

"I think sometimes the people I seem to like most as musical artists, are the late arrivers, the ones who have had to work a lot harder in a sense to get facility, to get fluency."

- Bill Evans (interview; 1980)

"I believe, first of all, that the person who sees into the future farthest is the person wo sees into the past the farthest."

- Bill Evans (interview; 1965)

Bill, for all you did, thank you.

-kk