Bill Evans

3/20/2021

David A. Windham

Bill Evans

On occasion, something will strike me and I’ll do what I like to call a ‘deep dive distraction’ on it, which is how the majority of these posts get started. I listen to a lot of music when I’m in front of the machines. I’ve been keeping tabs on my listening habits for the last ten years and my most played musician is Bill Evans₁. This last week, I had From Left to Right₂on repeat and I’m listening to it again as I’m writing this. I think it’s the interplay of the Fender Rhodes₃ and Steinway pianos and it’s likely where the title came from with the album cover image of him playing each instrument on each hand even though he didn’t like electric instruments.

Part of the reason he’s topping my charts is that I’ve listened to The Complete Fantasy Recordings more times than I’d like to count. It was originally a 9-CD box set. I’m not even sure about why I like his music because I don’t have enough of a comprehension of music theory to explain. I think that this fact is something Bill would appreciate and understand. The primary motivation for this essay was watching an interview last week between him and his brother in the 1966 documentary film entitled the Universal Mind of Bill Evans₄where he explains:

“In fact, I would often rely more on the judgement of a sensitive layman than that of a professional, since the professional, because of his constant involvement with the mechanics of music, must fight to preserve the naivety that the layman already possesses.”

This really struck a chord with me. For many years, I went without knowing anything about Bill Evans life. I just listened to it because I enjoyed it. I’ve learned that he had an instrumental influence on two other albums I’m a fan of: Miles Davis Kind of Blue and Chet Baker Chet. ( Ha… that’s twice I’ve had a play on words related to music ‘struck a chord’ and ‘instrumental’ ) Needless to say, I’m a bit more in the know now and I’m not going to rehash anything you can’t read online. I’ll link to them below in my references. The most interesting resource I’ve found is now a document published by Matt Evans, who I’m guessing has some relation. It’s entitled The Two Brothers As I Knew Them – Harry and Bill Evans₆ and written by Pat Evans the wife of Harry Evans. In it, she details a bit of personal influence on Bill by Rollo May₇. May also had a sibling diagnosed with schizophrenia like Bill and I can better understand the influence.

“It’s more the mind that thinks jazz than the instrument that plays jazz that interests me. “

Bill Evans life is poignant and tragic. I prefer the hero myth, but I’m very sympathetic to the other. Here are some interesting items that stand out to me: He is closely tied to Baton Rouge which is near the heart of the origins of Jazz in New Orleans, but I think his style is still a bit distinctive from other roots Jazz artists because I hear more classical influence. Photographs of Bill Evans remind me of both Glen Gould₈ and Dimitri Shostakovich₉. It’s something about the pensive gaze the the spectacles. Perhaps I’m just associating the piano virtuosity, but you can compare them at various ages and see the similarities. Bill Evans mother, Mary Soroka Evans was from Ukrainian decent often played Russian music in the house while the brothers were studying piano. Bill’s Ukrainian grandmother lived with them. His father was an alcoholic Welshman who ran a golf course and liked to gamble. Harry Evans, his brother who was an accomplice musical theorist and was deployed to Nagasaki after the atomic bomb which may have had an effect on his later suicide and schizophrenia. Bill Evans was an avid reader of books on philosophy and religion. It was he who introduced John Coltrane to eastern religions. Evans also liked to paint and draw and was a good golfer. In his later years, his conversational style, hair, and tinted glasses even reminded me a bit of the comedian Mitch Hedberg who also died at the hands of cocaine and heroin.

Irregardless of his personal life, and although I don’t believe you can separate the art from the artist, it’s just something about his music. One quote about his musical style really stood out to me about his musical style because it referenced two of the other artist rounding out my top five most listened to artist: Ahmad Jamal₁₀ and Errol Garner₁₁. “One of Evan’s distinctive harmonic traits is excluding the root in his chords, just leaving the left implied. Thus Evans created a self-sufficient language for the left hand that allowed the transition from one chord to the next while hardly having to move the hand. I’ve become quite the fan of that which has been left undone or unsaid as a style in every art form because I think it requires a much more comprehensive understanding. I think that we have an innate understanding of the aesthetics of the world around us. For Bill Evans, the tone, color, and harmonics of his work is just natural. Watch some of the interviews and listen very closely to the music because there is something very distinctively pure about the innocent naivety and deep understanding in it.

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