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 The harmony specialist Bernard Maury (1943-2005) was one of the best Bill Evans connoisseurs worldwide. "I had some great times with Bill Evans. When he sat down at the piano I never missed a note. He was one of the great names of jazz, try as he might to deny it - he was a very modest man. "It didn't come at all naturally," he told me. "I had to work darned hard." He would play certain sequences again and again so I could really understand them. He never gave lessons, but if he felt someone was receptive to his music and could see what he was up to, he would go out of his way to explain. I had already been trying to analyse his music for quite a while. Two years before, I'm not sure I would have had the faintest idea about what he was doing. Bill was one of the most important jazz pianists of the second half of the century, up there with Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. Modern jazz musicians owe him an enormous debt. In the world of jazz he's also a direct descendent of the French school of Faure, Ravel, Debussy and Lili Boulanger" (Interview with Isabelle Leymarie). Bernard Maury introduced Evans the music of Lili Boulanger and he was fascinated with her polychordal and modal music. "When he returned to New Jersey in 1972 we wrote us a long letter to share his enthusiasm, indicating (underlined) the passages that in particular moved him". In the late '80s, after the untimely death of Bill Evans Maury began a series of tribute concerts with piano duets along with former Evans student Warren Bernhardt. He gave lectures at Berklee School in Boston and masterclasses at several universities in Europe and USA. He died in 2005.
 The late Francis Paudras (1935-1997) was really fond of piano, not only jazz piano (Bud Powell, Bill Evans, Jacky Terrasson), but also classical piano, for example, Ravel, Debussy, and Rachmaninoff, and he had a special admiration for Glenn Gould.
He wrote a portrait of pianist Bud Powell (1924-1966): The Dance of the Infidels, a moving jazz memoir. Bill Evans wrote the foreword and coda of the book. He remarks, “If I had to choose one single musician for his artistic integrity, for the incomparable originality of his creation and the grandeur of his work, it would be Bud Powell." In turn Paudras wrote the liner notes for the last live recordings of the Bill Evans Trio at Ronnie Scott in London in 1980. The book served as the basis for Bertrand Tavernier's film Round Midnight (1986), starring saxophonist Dexter Gordon and pianist Herbie Hancock.
Francis Paudras had a country house, a Manoir, 45 minutes drive from Poitiers. He recorded more than 300 hours of music in the two years he stayed there. It became a jazz haven, attracting other greats, including Gil Evans, Herbie Hancock, Bud Powell, Bill Evans, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday: the lady sang the blues there for more than two months. Paudras drank heavily. He had lost all his money, both his marriages had failed and most of his jazz friends were dead. He hanged himself in the cellar of the Manoir in 1997, aged 62, surrounded by empty wine bottles. During the funeral service, the pianists Maurice Vander, Jacky Terrasson, and Bernard Maury played some of his favorite tunes. See here a short YouTube clip of Paudras at the piano.
An excerpt from an interview with Francis Paudras in the French magazine Le Jazzophone from 1980: "Since 1964 every time I see Bill, I discovered another man. In 1972, I saw someone different, not only physically but also in his behavior. He was already as far as I can remember a delicate character without being sophisticated. When I say delicate I also want to say very distinguished, very elegant, as is his music. He also has a crazy sense of humor. And he always expressed himself clearly by carefully choosing his words. And moreover he is an intelligent and cultivated person. When you're with him, the whole environment changes in quality." |
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Bill Evans and Francis Paudras, Nice 1978 
Bernard Maury and Bill Evans, at the home of Francis Paudras 1979 
Bill Evans, Francis Paudras and Marc Johnson, Lyon 1980 
Bernard Maury, Nenette Evans and Vicki Pedrini, California 1997 With permission and property of Nenette Evans 
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His British friend Brian Hennessey |
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Finally 
When you have been so influenced and emotionally moved by an artist’s work, you can be forgiven for thinking that they are not as a normal human being. They function on a much higher plain and concentrate solely on their art. When one of these icons arrives at your house as a guest, you soon realise (well in Bill’s case anyway) that his interests were not solely confined to music and the piano.
I remember a comment from Bill that appeared on the liner notes of his Empathy LP: “Sometimes it can happen that you see everything in terms of music. It’s like a fixation. You can’t help it. But it’s bad if you can’t pull out of it. Nothing should be that dominating. If it is, it’s perverted.”
He was really quite a normal human being when he was allowed to be. Apart from his love of literature (a particular fondness for William Blake and Thomas Hardy and Zen of course) he was interested in discussing International politics particularly from a moral point of view. He turned down a lucrative tour to the USSR as a moral protest to the invasion of Afghanistan. On his first weeks pay day on his first visit to London he asked me to take him to the Amex office in Piccadilly. There he first paid off a number of outstanding bills paid through Amex in New York. That left him with around £100. He split that in two and donated half to a plea from Oxfam for funds to relieve starvation in Biafra.