Two personalities had a great influence upon the musical career and personal life of Bill Evans: Gene Lees and Helen Keane. Gene Lees introduced impresario Helen Keane to Bill Evans in July 1962 in the kitchen of the Village Vanguard. Lees was over ten years the partner of Helen Keane and was always central to the relationship between impresario and musician.

Gene Lees (February 8, 1928 - April 22, 2010)

Gene Lees is a Canadian journalist, lyricist, singer and composer. He was editor of the jazz magazine Down Beat, later he published on freelance basis and wrote among other things for The New York Times. He contributed liner notes to close to 100 recordings of artists including Stan Getz, John Coltrane, and Quincy Jones. He published a lot of books on jazz as "Waiting for Dizzy" and biographies of Oscar Peterson and Dave Brubeck. Lees, who studied composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston wrote the lyrics for many songs during the 1960s. He became a close friend of Bill Evans and he wrote the lyrics to his compositions “Waltz For Debby”, “My Bells”, and “Turn Out The Stars” and contributed liner notes to his recordings as “Conversations With Myself”. He introduced also Helen Keane to Bill Evans, who became his personal manager and producer and who would fashion his following career. In "Friends along the way": Helen and Bill (268-285) by Gene Lees (Yale University Press, 2003). Gene Lees defined the music of Bill Evans as “Love-letters written to the world from some prison of the heart.” He is the author of another fourteen books of jazz history and analysis including "Meet Me at Jim & Andy's: Jazz Musicians and Their World" with an excellent chapter on Bill Evans: The Poet (Oxford University Press,1990), "Cats of Any Color: Jazz, Black and White" (Da Capo Press, 2001), "Singers and the Song" (Oxford University Press, 1987) and "You Can't Steel Steal a Gift" (Bison Books, 2004). Since 1981, he had published his idiosyncratic Jazzletter, a monthly collection of essays that was something of a blog before the term was invented. It became an underground sensation among musicians and critics, and Mr. Lees often reworked articles from his newsletter into his books.



Helen Keane (1923-1996)

Except for the producers Orrin Keepnews of Riverside and Creed Taylor of Verve, Helen Keane was Evans's personal manager and producer since 1962 and remained that almost longlife for 18 years, until his death in 1980; she was one of the few women on the business side of jazz. Overall, Helen produced some thirty of Evans' records over a period of 15 years on the Verve, Warner, Columbia, CTI, Fantasy labels. Seven of these albums produced for Bill Evans were Grammy winners, and numerous others have been nominated for the award; the most recent were awarded in 1980 for the Best Jazz Recording by a Soloist and Best Recording by a Group. She was responsible for bringing Evans together with singer Tony Bennett and she produced two albums with this unique duo. She produced in 1989 the Fantasy boxed 9 discs set titled "The Complete Fantasy Recordings" and the 1991 release "Blue in Green - The Concert in Canada" for Milestone, a compilation of several live recordings in Canada. Furthermore she produced the 45 minute video "The Universal Mind of Bill Evans", now reissued as DVD. She died in 1996 in New York at the age of 73. She was cremated and buried at Mystic, Connecticut. The memorial service was held at the Saint Peter's Lutheran, the "jazz church" in New York. After the untimely death of Bill Evans, an impressive tribute album was recorded by Helen Keane and Herb Wong; they put together an all-star line-up of 14 contemporary fellow pianists who made also statements on the music and personality of Bill Evans. Helen Keane: "He was a pure, beautiful soul. Even when he was in the worst private torment, he kept on giving beauty to the world right up to the end. That's how we should remember him."

Helen Keane has spearheaded several projects which have kept Bill Evans memory and music available and accessible. She was invited to the 1992 IAJE (International Association of Jazz Educators) convention to present a lecture on Bill Evans.

In 1991 Helen Keane produced a celebration concert for Bill Evans at the New School Auditorium in New York.

From a press release: Last night, Helen Keane and the New School presented "A Celebration of Bill Evans", a concert of pianists paying musical tribute to one of the geniuses of jazz piano. Playing solo and in improvised duets, pianists George Shearing, Barry Harris, James Williams, Joanne Brackeen, David Berkman, Geoff Keezer and Don Friedman, entertained an enthusiastic audience with superlative keyboard artistry.