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PROSE Since its beginning in the early twentieth century, jazz music has exercised an influence on American literature's subject matter and style. Beginning in the 1920s, an era labeled “The Jazz Age” by novelist and short story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Jazz continued to evolve throughout the first half of the century, moving from swing music to the even more freely played bebop, with its emphasis on spontaneity and improvisation. The latter jazz form received its most famous literary validation in the works of American novelist Jack Kerouac, who initiated the Beat movement with his novel "On the Road" (1957). Another beat poet, Allen Ginsberg, also imitated bebop rhythms in his poem “Howl” (1956). William Burroughs, Gregory Corso and LeRoi Jones also found inspiration in jazz music and the culture that surrounded it. James Baldwin spent much of his time exploring the jazz scene in Greenwich Village before his novels were published. Langston Hughes' writing was inspired by the jazz rhythms as the basis of his poetry. Authors in the 1980s and 1990s who displayed a reverence for jazz music include Josef Skvorecky ("The Bass Saxophone") and Michael Ondaatje ("Coming Through Slaughter"). The next three novelists have been inspired by the musician Bill Evans and his personality. |
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CHRISTIAN GAILLY (1943), a widely celebrated French novelist, saxophonist and psychoanalist wrote a novel in French "Un Soir au Club" (Editions Minuit 2002) translated "An Evening at the Club" (Other Press; New Ed edition March 17, 2003). This novel has become famous throughout Europe. As a number one bestseller in France, it won the 2002 Prix Livre Inter and has also been translated into Dutch, Russian, Italian and German. The main character Simon Nardis (Nardis recorded frequently by Bill Evans) gave up his career as an outstandingly innovative jazz pianist to save his life and his marriage. No more road trips, drugs, alcohol or women. And no more jazz. Then, one evening, he finds himself in a jazz club owned by the American singer Debbie Parker (Waltz for Debby). His wife died. Other personages be named Bill, Scott (LaFaro) and Paul (Motian). One can draw unmistakable a lot of parallels between the principal character in the novel and the life of Bill Evans. |
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MARTIN BRIL (1959-2009) is a freelance Dutch writer, journalist and columnist for countless magazines. He studied philosophy and graduated the Film Academy. He wrote among other things a book with short poetic essays about music "Een plek onder de zon" (Prometheus 2006). One essay is called 'Waltz For Debby', the well-known composition of Bill Evans. The writer is moving by car on the highway in a darkened landscape where he passes the Dutch city Veenendaal. A translated paragraph from this essay by Martin Bril: |
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"A few miles later I suddenly thought about Bill Evans - jazz pianist. And if I think of Bill Evans then I think of a tonic.
As the carbon dioxide (or is it the quinine?) above the glass dances when you have just poured the tonic, so sounds Bill Evans, but then in slow motion. It is so pure that there is almost nothing more.
"Waltz for Debby" is the title of one of Evans' finest albums. I've never known a woman who called Debby, and I've never danced a waltz, but on the album is one of the most moving piano pieces I know: "Porgy" - a sparse, dreamy song that at first hearing sounds as a romantic trivial piece , but that at further listening constantly opens new vistas, a handful of notes, two hands on a keyboard, a bass in the background sometimes sounds like an organ; pure consolation, and deeper than that. |
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ADAM GOPNIK (1956) is an American writer, essayist and commentator. He is best known as a staff writer for "The New Yorker" to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir and criticism and as the author of the essay collection "Paris to the Moon", an account of the half-decade that Gopnik spent in the French capital. After returning, twenty of his essays for "The New Yorker" have been collected in a new book "Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York". Gopnik proves himself an erudite companion as he discourses on such subjects as the decline of the department store, the revival of Times Square and the story behind the Bill Evans Trio jazz classic "Sunday at the Village Vanguard." The essay “That Sunday”, Gopnik’s 2001 account of the Bill Evans Vanguard sessions in "The New Yorker" (August 13, 2001) on the occasion of their fortieth anniversary: "It is a good day to remember one of our greatest musicians." |
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Adam Gopnik wrote of Evans’s playing in these recordings, “They are as close to pure emotion,
produced without impediments - not at all the same thing as an entire self poured out without inhibitions, the bebop dream
- as exists in music.” Bill Evans has no casual fans, Evans' name has become "synonymous with a heartbreak quality that is not like anything else in music."
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POETRY
In the literature an influence of jazz on poets appears commonplace.
Much has been written about the connections between jazz and a number of contemporary poems.
Various collections are devoted to such poetry, including "Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose" (Coffee House Press 1992) by Art Lange and Nathaniel Mackey and "Second Set - The Jazz Poetry Anthology Vol2 (Indiana University Press 1996) by Sascha Feinstein and Yusuf Komunyakaa. Ted Joans (1928-2003) was a poet, artist, and trumpet player.
André Breton proclaimed him a surrealist; he was associated with the Beat Generation.
His jazz poems are collected in a book called "Black Pow-Wow".
The Truth
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L’ivoire et les précieux bois Laqués, l’ébène, tout renvoie Mon image à moi-même et lui rend l’image de moi. Entre leurs reflets et mes doigts Rien ne s’interpose, qu’un peu de froid. Mais pour ce reflet dans l’ivoire, mes doigts Sont aussi des reflets: l’envers devient l’endroit Qui n’a plus matière ni poids, Et délivrés mes vingt doigts jouent fidèlement ensemble. Cependant je penche mon front toujours plus bas Pour les regarder qui s’effleurent et se contemplent, Car de part et d’autre mes doigts me gardent l’équilibre Contre l’ivoire qui n ést plus qu’une ouverture libre Entre les deux fonds du miroir où j’approche de moi. Et je m’entends m’interroger et me répondre Seul, double, prosterné sur la profondeur d’ombre, Dans la lumière de mes doigts. copyright © by Jacques Réda |
The ivory and the precious lacquered Woods, the ebony, all mirrors An own image to myself and reflects it back. Between this reflection and my fingers, Nothing comes in-between, except maybe some cold. However relative to the reflection in the ivory, my fingers Are also reflection: A shadow becomes a hand Having neither substance nor weight, And freed up, can my twenty fingers faithfully play together However, I lean my forehead still lower To be able to watch them touch and observe each other gently Since from either sides these fingers hold the balance Against an ivory which has become open space Between two mirror backgrounds where I still get closer to Me And I hear myself questioning and answering Single, doubled, kneeling at the depth of shade Onder the glow of my fingers. copyright © by Jacques Réda |
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BILL ZAVATSKY (1943), a good friend of Bill Evans, worked as a jazz pianist and journalist (articles in New York Times Book Review and Rolling Stone) and has been teaching English literature at Trinity School in Manhattan. He won the PEN/Book of the Month Club Translation Prize and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. He published three collections of poetry. He wrote several poems on Evans music in "Where X Marks the Spot" (Hanging Loose Press 2006). One poem, "Live at the Village Vanguard" is addressed to the audience heard on the historic recordings at the Village Vanguard in July, 1961. The poem is not as much about what Evans was doing on stage, but what the audience was doing: chattering away, clinking dishes, ordering drinks. He wonders if they now listen to the recording, point to their chattering voices, and say, "Hey, honey— that's me". Beyond these barbs, he wishes he could help them hear the miracle occurring right in front of them, to distract them from their distracted lives. After Bill Evans died in 1980, Bill Zavatsky was asked by Nenette Evans and his manager Helen Keane to write something for the first pothumous recording that would be released, which turned out to be "Elegy" for "You Must Believe in Spring", Bill Evans's first album for Warner Brothers. Two compositions are by Evans himself: the opening track, "B Minor Waltz" reflecting on the suicide of his ex-girlfriend Ellaine, the other "We Will Meet Again" on the suicide of his older brother Harry, a year before the pianist's own death in 1980. Later in 1983 the Norwegian pianist Egil Kapstad released a LP (now CD) called "Epilog - Bill Evans in Memoriam" (Ponca Jazz Records) where the pianist wrote a gorgeous melody on the lyrics of "Elegy" sung by vocalist Sheila Jordan with jazz and string quartet. On the album Zavatsky also wrote the lyrics for "Our Autumn Waltz". The second poem "To the Pianist Bill Evans" published Bill Zavatsky in his first book "Theories of Rain and Other Poems" (1975). |
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"Elegy"
For Bill Evans", 1929-1980 Music your hands are no longer here to make Still breaks against my ear, still shakes my heart. Then I feel that I am still before you. You bend above your shadow on the keys That tremble at your touch or crystallize, Water forced to concntrate. In meditation You close your eyes to see yourself more clearly. Now you know the source of sound, The element bone and muscle penetrate Hoping to bring back beauty. Hoping to catch what lies beyond our reach, You hunted with your fingertips. |
My life you found, and many other lives Which traveled through yor hands upon their journey. Note by note we followed in your tracks, like Hearing the rain, eyes closed to feel more deeply. We stood before the mountains of your touch. The sunlight and the shade you carried us We drank, tasting our bitter lives more sweetly From the spring of song that never stops its kiss. (Excerpted from "Where X Marks the Spot", 2006) Copyright © by Bill Zavatsky Published with permission of the author |
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"To the Pianist Bill Evans" When I hear you play “My Foolish Heart” I am clouded remembering more than Scott LaFaro’s charred bass as it rested against a Yonkers wall in its transit from accidental fire like a shadowy grace note exploding into rhythms of Lou insanely driving “Man, we’re late!” his long curved bass straining the car interior, a canvas swan my hand clutched, fingered, refingered: steel strings as of the human neck the vulnerable neck the neck of music squeezed by hands the fragile box of song, the breath I crushed out of music before I killed by accident |
whatever in me could sing not touching the keyboard of terrible parties and snow snow falling as canvas and wood and hair flamed behind a windshield I imagined being trapped inside, still see it in my heart our terror magnified note by note purified each year the gentle rise and circle of cinders in February air in their transit from fire into music, into memory, a space where heroin does not slowly wave its blazing arm ... (Excerpted from "Theories of Rain and Other Poems", 1975) Copyright © by Bill Zavatsky Published with permission of the author |
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ROBERT SCHULER, who teaches film, American Literature, and writing at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, wrote an anthology of 38 poems "In search of Green Dolphin Street”, a homage to Bill Evans (Marsh River Editions 2004). He describes his book of poetry as “a suite of poems in praise of Bill Evans.” He postulates: "I try to carve strong images and to intensify them with as much music as I can fashion for the matter at hand. I want to fully evoke the thingness of things, the essence of nature, music, art, or humanity". His homage to Evans is felt in almost every poem. |
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From the poem 6:55 PM, June 23rd
the best of days when the Bill Evans Trio set out to discover the essence of music time keeps coming back why not make it perfect time these crystalline compositions that preserve beauty that keep their own time racing ahead in runs of the bass trills of the piano time could be lovely lovely copyright © by Robert Schuler |
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GERALD LOCKLIN has taught English since 1965 at California State University, Long Beach and is the author of over 125 books and of poetry, fiction, and criticism, with over 3000 poems, stories, articles, reviews, and interviews published in periodicals. "Takes on Bill Evans" is another wonderful collection of jazz poems (Zerx Press, 2002). "For one who has respect for melody, even the improvisation on a melody may constitute a melody". |
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From "Takes on Bill Evans"
My Foolish Heart Be still! Still as his style in which emotion is contained within close chords. A stillness can explode just as the silent night did. Milestones Never let a stone unturned. The pianist cast spells upon the stepping stones. The trumpet pointed towards the sky. All we have learned must be unlearned, but first it must be learned. copyright © by Gerald Locklin |
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JAN ZWICKY is a Canadian philosopher, poet, essayist, and violinist. She is an associate professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. She is winner of the 1999 Governor General's Award for Poetry, is nominated for the 1999 BC Book Prize for Poetry and shortlisted for the 1999 Pat Lowther Memorial Award for the Best Book of Poetry by a Canadian Woman. Many of her poems speak to or follow the rhythms of particular musical works of Mozart, Brahms and Bach. She published "Songs for Relinquishing the Earth" ( Brick 1998) with some Bill Evans songs, among other things "Here's That Rainy Day" and "You Must believe in Spring". Next poem is a reference to the song "Never Let Me Go" from the solo piano album "Alone" (Verve 1968) |
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Alone
Sound that makes night fall around it like the glow from a reading lamp. Rain on the roof, straight down. The name of your name spoken without another's. Rubato is a hand you thought indifferent laid, briefest of moments, on your sleeve. It walks away, then, that sound, without looking back. Lights up a Lucky. Says we hadn't the ghost of a chance, says never let me go. copyright © by Jan Zwicky |
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JEFFREY SKINNER is a poet, and professor of Creative Writing at the University of Louisville. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Howard Foundation. He published a book of poems called "Gender Studies" (Miami University Press 2002). A section of that book is called “Bill Evans and the Birds of Appetite”, a series of sonnets in the voice of jazz pianist Bill Evans. The poems are incredibly moving because the language is so tense and musical, fresh and surprising. Next sonnet is a memo to the last drummer of Bill Evans, Joe LaBarbera. |
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Memo to Joe LaBarbera How many seconds, total, does blood settle down so you see the matted leaves refracting summer glare, and from your most personal American lawn let ambition fizzle, like a tablet in icewater? Not many. Yes, I am rushing and I want you to go with me . . . When they brought up talent I said drive and early on wanted everyone to know how many keyboard miles I'd logged before arrival, here – wherever here may be. I'm grateful for what I've been allowed to accomplish, and the ease of a new son, a new trio; the softer view from fifty. But there's a tag for the push of sheer will, Joe: straight up, cold. It's no picnic, my refusal to please. Yes, I am rushing, and I want you to go with me. Published with permission of Jeffrey Skinner |
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PETER LABARBERA (not Evans' last drummer Joe LaBarbera) published on internet in his Poetry Jazz Zine Collection poems about Bill Evans and other legends such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz. Next poem about Bill Evans and the bassist of the "first trio" Scott LaFaro: |
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Slumped and slumped over a piano of time pouring his entirety into ivory, telling a story in a language that sits on the edge of a wave awaiting to be washed to shore, leaving the result in the smooth sand. He interprets his pain in a minor key and the sound swirls around the night bringing the mood to rest inside the figure of the bass: Scott La Faro - an ever part of the man's pain swirls through the music created by the slumped figure at the piano. copyright © by Peter LaBarbera |
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PETER BALAKIAN is an Armenian-American poet, writer and academic.
He holds a Ph.D. in Ame- | ||
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Blue Light we pulled into a string of glass that seeped out of the long vibration of Miles' Blue in Green like slow time in the empty lot after soot and rain and rush, the Ferry out of sight, my bones electric with the hum of the cable of the Bridge at 3 a.m. and the dying lights of the Bowery. Bill Evans making the rain thin to a beam of haze before the horn comes back from underwater. copyright © by Peter Balakian |
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ALAN FELDMAN has been professor of English at Framingham State College. He taught the advanced creative writing workshop at Harvard's Radcliffe Seminars.
Feldman's poems have appeared in many magazines, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Poetry, and have been featured several times on Poetry Daily (www.poems.com)."A Sail to Great Island" (University of Wisconsin Press 2004) won the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. One poem is dedicated to Bill Evans: |
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"Never Let Me Go"
Never let me go, says the piano, then the five syllables are repeated a little lower, maybe more sadly, or with more acceptance that this plaint is endless, fruitless, but it is the plaint of love forever, whatever else changes, and the five notes always sound different the way the lover constantly is finding new ways to ask what can't be answered. The piano takes a break to think it over all around the keyboard, as if it is free to take a walk, anywhere away from those five notes, but no, it's been walking towards them. Never let me go, it says cheerfully, tenderly, without reproach, as if it knows that saying so is its true calling. copyright © by Alan Feldman |
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SEBASTIAN MATTHEWS is a graduate of the University of Michigan and lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where he works as an adjunct instructor at Warren Wilson College. He published a recent collection of poetry "We Generous" (Red Hen Press, 2007), which contains a section of poems referencing music and musicians, such as Miles Davis, Roy Eldridge, Billie Holiday, Sonny Rollins, and Louis Armstrong. His poem in the volume alluding to Bill Evans "Live at the Village Vanguard" described the background noise during the live recording session. Recent CD remastered versions offers considerably improved sound quality over any CD or LP versions. The hiss you hear from CD and LP is virtually gone. This gives listeners greater clarity and depth in sound. Unfortunately, this makes the background noise of the audience with their chats, laughs and silverware more noticeable. This could be disturbing to seriously devoted Bill Evans fans, although Paul Motian, the only living member of the trio, has recently mentioned in the Swing Journal's interview that the chatty audience never bothered the trio in those days. |
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"Live at the Village Vanguard"
Near the end of Bill Evans’ “Porgy (I Love You, Porgy)” played live at the Village Vanguard and added as an extra track on Waltz for Debby (a session made famous by the death of the trio’s young bassist in a car crash) a woman laughs. There’s been background babble bubbling up the whole set. You get used to the voices percolating at the songs’ fringes, the clink of glasses and tips of silver on hard plates. Listen to the recording enough and you almost accept the aural clutter as another percussive trick the drummer pulls out, like brushes on a snare. But this woman’s voice stands out for its carefree audacity, how it broadcasts the lovely stair of her happiness. Evans has just made one of his elegant flights up an octave and rests on its landing, notes spilling from his left hand like sunlight, before coming back down into the tune’s lush living-room of a conclusion. The laugh begins softly, subsides, then lifts up to step over the bass line: five bursts of pleasure pushed out of what can only be a long lovely tan throat. Maybe Evans smiles to himself when he hears it, leaving a little space between the notes he’s cobbled to close the song; maybe the man she’s with leans in, first to still her from the laugh he’s just coaxed from her, then to caress the cascade of her hair that hangs, lace curtain, in the last vestiges of spotlight stippling the table. copyright © by Sebastian Matthews |
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GRACE SCHULMAN has received New York University's Delmore Schwartz Award for Poetry and two Pushcart Prizes, and she was recently awarded the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. She is Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, as well as the poetry editor of The Nation and a former director of the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y. She lives in New York City. The title of her new collection "The Broken String" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008) refers to violonist Itzhak Perlman's will to play a violin concerto despite a missing string, which inspires the poet's celebration of life in its fullness and limitations. Musicians in these poems rise above their other kinds of brokenness — and sometimes succumb to them. The great pianist Bill Evans hits a false note and pounds his fists on the keys, venting a lifetime's accumulated struggle and loss. From the first poem and second strophe: |
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"The Broken String"
What you have left: Bill Evans at the keyboard, Porgy. The sound rose, but one note, unworthy, stalled in his head above the weightless chords, above the bass, the trumpet's holler: Porgy. A sudden clenched fist rose, pounded the keys, fell limp: a heroin shot had hit a nerve. I Loves You, Porgy. Sundays at the Vanguard he soloed, improvised — his test that starved nameless fear. Hands pitted against each other, like the sea's crosscurrents, played away anger. copyright © by Grace Schulman |
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AUGUST KLEINZAHLER (born 1949) is an American poet. He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He won the 2004 Griffin International Poetry Prize and the 2004 Gold Medal in Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California, and was short-listed for the U.K.‘s Forward Prize in Poetry. He is also the recipient of awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1989), the Lila Acheson-Reader’s Digest Award for Poetry (1991), and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1996). In 2000 he was awarded a Berlin Prize Fellowship. He is the author of ten books of poetry. In his poetry collection "Earthquake Weather" (Moyer Bell, 1989, p. 34) he wrote "What It Takes" about Bill Evans and Scott LaFaro. |
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What It Takes
He stared for hours at the cat taking his ease under the calla leaf or fog pour in late afternoon whelming the tower on the hill how bird truck or shout wind & light scored day the way the music roll in a nickelodeon's scored and what it played in the mind or the young Bill Evans before Scott LaFaro died playing My Foolish Heart again and again fennel, lobelia shadow & flies however many times it takes copyright © by August Kleinzahler |
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JACQUES REDA (1929), a French poet and jazz critic. He received in 1983 the "Grand Prix de poésie de la Ville de Paris" and
in 1993 the "Grand Prix de l'Académie française" for his total body of work. He was editor of the French periodical "Jazzmagazine". Jacques Réda published "L'improviste" volume one and two, and "Anthologie Des Musiciens De Jazz". He wrote like several authors poems on the music of Bill Evans. He wrote 5 poems with the title "Tombeau de Bill Evans", perhaps with reference to "Tombeau de Couperin" by Maurice Ravel, inspired by the Bill Evans songs "Displacement", "Conversations With Myself", "Peace Piece", "Interplay" and "Explorations ('L'improviste II' - Jouer le jeu, Gallimard 1985), also published in the French "Jazzmagazine". An example is the poem on "Conversations With Myself", the first of Evans overdubbed solo albums with monologues, dialogues and trialogues. On the left the original for those who master the French language , next to it an attempt to translate the poem in English.