Compositions

Everybody talks about my harmonic conception. But if I really worked hard in this domain, it’s because I did not have good ears

Bill Evans

He was a master in interpreting standards, he made arrangements, reharmonized them and rephrased the melodic lines. He was able to create alterations to a tune’s original harmony in short order, often in the studio just before recording a tune. His reharmonizations are so beautiful that when playing standards, most musicians use his changes, rather than the original ones. Saxophonist Cannonball Adderley stated: “Bill Evans has rare originality and taste and the even rarer ability to make his conception of a standard seem the definitive way to play it.” Jazzpianist Warren Bernhardt said of Bill Evans “Everything he plays seems to be the distillation of the music, he never states the original melody. Yet his performance is the quintessence of it.” By analysing the devices Evans used for the interpretation of the original melodies of the standards were: diminution and augmentations, rhythmic displacements, drop voicings, inner lines, rubato, substitute chords, voice leading, chord anticipations, fills, chromatic approach chords, left hand lines, melody with thirds, fourths, fifths and sixths, contrary motion and use of changing key centers. Evans effectively combined all of these devices together to produce his own original, significant, and influential solo piano style. (An analysis of Bill Evans’ approach to playing the melody of selected jazz ballads, thesis by M.I. Can Cankaya, William Paterson University, 2009).

During an interview in Jazzwise (Sept 2012) by Brian Priestly from 1972, when Bill Evans was playing one of his Ronnie Scott’s residencies, Brian asked “Presumably you’re still continuing to feature standard ballads?” Bill: “Yeah, we play quite a bit of standards. But I’m leaning a little heavier on original material, and I think I’ll probably be emphasizing original material even more in the future. Somehow, although I don’t depart from a standard form that much, the vehicles that I write lend themselves maybe a little better to the way the trio plays sometimes.” Brian: “It isn’t because you’ve become tired of some of the popular standards?” Bill: “No, I don’t get tired of them, they’re all wonderful tunes. That would be enough for me, the rest of my life, but I’ve always had a compositional ambition and desire. So I would like to get busier writing, and writing for the trio also. But any time I come across a tune that I really love and get into, by coincidence or whatever circumstance, I’ll use it regardless. (Copyright Brian Priestley, Jazzwise)

Bill Evans talking about the Great American Songbook (NPR 2008):

Bill Evans took post-graduate studies in composition at the Mannes College of Music during the periode in which he recorded his first album as a leader. Initially Evans was underrated as a composer, his talents in this area being “overshadowed by the genius of his playing”. He was however a productive composer and wrote more than 50 compositions. His compositions were closely tied to his improvisational style. In his third year at high school he wrote already his first composition “Very Early”, a tune in waltz time. Over the years, many of this tunes became prime jazz standards, like “Waltz For Debby” and “Turn Out the Stars”. Most compositions have been recorded several times and were part of Bill Evans’ trio and solo repertoire. Bill Evans was a gifted and sensitive composer, his compositions are among the richest and most original compositions in jazz, laced with beautiful, lush alterations and passing chords. His work has been interpreted by other pianists in countless ways through the years. He took his place alongside the great masters of composition, demonstrating all of the style characteristics that have distinguished him as one of the most innovative pianists in jazz. His compositions often utilized a few basic formulas or patterns combined into a complex structure over which he then improvised. He composed throughout his career, but especially in the last years before his untimely death his compositions as well as his playing showed more harmonic richness. Several compositions were written as theme and variations over an ostinato bass like “Peace Piece”, while another took the form of a fugue like the classical counterpoint in the intro melody of “Fudgesickle Built for Four”, a long-forgotten Evans obscurity on the Loose Blues album from 1962. Evans was particularly in his last years a very productive composer. An excerpt from the Merv Griffin Show, Sept 23, 1980: Griffin: Our next guest is considered one of the most influential piano soloists in the jazz world today, and his new album is called We Will Meet Again. Would, you welcome the great Bill Evans! Evans: I’m gonna change up on you. You know, directors always panic about what you’re gonna play — “Don’t play anything slow.” I don’t get a chance to play on shows like this too often, where I reach this many people, and I’ve been writing songs — they’ve been coming out lately like laying eggs. Every once in a while I’ll go [imitates chicken squawking], and there’s a new tune! The last tune I wrote, I was calling for a while — because it was untitled — “the diddly-ah tune.” Finally I realized it’s formed mostly of one idea, over and over, and goes in different places. It seemed to be making more and more of a statement, the more we played it. So I would like to do this, which I think is a little more serious, maybe, for your audience. I won’t improvise, just play two choruses of the melody. It’s now called “Your Story.”

He became well-known for the close and fruitful working friendship and musical empathy with Bill Evans, who played and recorded his compositions along his entire musical career. He composed for Bill “Sareen Jurer”, “How My Heart Sings”, “Elsa”, “Mother of Earl”, “Soire”, “Lullaby for Helene”. Evans particularly favored the waltzes “Elsa” and “How My Heart Sings”, which evolved into jazz standards over the pianist’s productive recording career. “Bill Evans always said he was a 3/4 person”, Earl told me “and I likewise agreed, that I was, too”. “For me, his harmonic, melodic and rhythmical invention surpassed any and all contemporary jazz pianists. He had a magical, almost mystical communication with the piano and music, and he had the ability to draw tone from the instrument and make it sing, especially in his ballads” (Interview by Leda Hanin with Earl Zindars as an alumni of the DePaul School of Music).

One song in particular should be mentioned: “Quiet Now”. Bill Evans was not the composer. Pianist and psychiatrist Denny Zeitlin wrote this enduring ballad , that became a longtime favorite of Bill Evans and a staple of his life sets and recordings. He recorded the song for the first time in 1967 on his second overdubbed album Further Conversations With Myself (Verve), and named his 1970 album Quiet Now (Affinity) after this Zeitlin composition. Bill Evans played this exquisite in almost every concert for around 20 years. Listen to Denny Zeitlin’s comment on this fact.

The most historically significant contributions of the Evans trio recordings were to loosen the common practises of the bop style rhythm section which had become standard during the 50s, walking bass, drummer playing ride rhythms and snapping shut hi-hat cymbal on the second and fourth beats. In the Bud Powell-style trio is the amount of rhythmic and melodic interaction between bassist and pianist relatively limited because the pianist fills up most of the spaces with lines of his own. By contrast what Bill Evans did not play, is his thoughtful and restrained manner of playing and masterful use of silence, which allowed bass and drums players to interact as much as they did, emancipating the piano, bass and drum roles. “Music itself is some sort of silence, because it imposes silence on noises and before all else the most unbearable of these noises are words. Music is the silence of words, like poetry is the silence of prose (Vladimir Janklvitch, a French philosopher and musicologist in Somewhere in the Unfinished). What distinguishes the music of Bill Evans from all or almost all other music genres is its poetic dimension. A form of communication that says as much by what it doesn’t say as by what it does. Bill Evans is always engaged in a duet with silence, and the silence says as much as he says. Evans’ essence was defined by his tastful economy of expression. The notes he chose not to play were fully as crucial as the ones he did. He was the master of the silent note, both in his reharmonizations of traditional jazz standards and his own original compositions.

From his website: “At the beginning it was a way to understand the sound of his voicings, his harmonic system, his personal treatment of the standards, the architecture of his own compositions, and the amazing mixing of control and emotion at the same time which characterized his interpretations. And I discovered a magic world, a music whose perfection was really astonishing, being unwritten: I realized the music that I got on paper was richer than I could imagine when simply listening.” Summarized, Pascal states in his recent article From sound to idea to symbol: 1. The transcription of jazz comes from a recording. If the player of the transcription first listens attentively to the recording, it reveals the slightest playing nuances, including touch. This is a huge advantage. Unlike the situation with most classical music, we have the recording of the original interpretation by its creator — it is an ideal “road map”. It is therefore necessary and desirable to use it. As a pianist, I cannot imagine learning a transcription of Bill Evans without carefully referring to the original recording. Interpreters of a jazz transcription must also use their ears, just as the transcriber did! 2. Music notation is very precise about which notes to play (“what?”) but much less so about their execution (“how?”). For that, it would be necessary to comment on almost every note in detail, which is impossible. Interpretation and expressiveness are “values added” by the musician. A score is the translation of sounds and their durations into written form. Therefore, it is inherently formulaic and limited. It does, however, act as a basic scenario which can be realized in different ways. (Clavier Companion, March-April 2012, pages 58-60).

Jed Distler is composer, pianist, broadcaster, writer, and presenter. In 1980 he was asked by Bill Evans to help edit and transcribe his piano solos for publication. The transcriptions for the album Conversations with Bill Evans (Decca, 1997) by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet are largely from Jed Distler. Other sheetmusic from him is Bill Evans : Rare Transcriptions Vol 3 including “Reflection in D” by Duke Ellington and Bill Evans 4 including “Waltz for Debby”, “Turn Out The Stars”, “One for Helen” and “Time Remembered”. He is artistic director of ComposersCollaborative inc. and reviewer of Gramophone and Classicstoday.com. He was one of the organizers of the thirtieth anniversary of Bill Evans’ passing on September 15, 2010 at the Cornelia Street Caf in New York, together with poet Bill Zavatsky and Laurie Verchomin, last girlfriend of Bill Evans and author of THE BIG LOVE ~ Life and Death with Bill Evans. A recent album by him is Meditate With the Masters (Musical Concepts , 2011). Some of Jed’s transcriptions as played by Bill Evans and used by Thibaudet for his Evans album can you find here: “Reflections in D”, “Noelle’s Theme” and “Hullo, Bolinas”. (Published here with permission of Jed Distler).

Chuck Israels

Chuck Israels, the bassist of the Bill Evans Trio from 1961 till 1966 made a clarifying and thorough analysis of the music of Bill Evans in an article on his website. The article deals apart from his compositions about rhythm, tone color, melody, voicings and phrasing of Bill Evans. The article from his website is published here with permission of Chuck Israels. See also his interview with Sean Dietrich from Allaboutjazz: Chuck Israels: Evans, Education and Philosophy. Chuck Israels: “The piano is an amazing instrument; a bunch of keys, levers, and hammers that are so sensitive that they respond differently to each player’s touch. Few jazz pianists have developed the range and nuance that was an integral part of Bill’s playing. One chord, or two or three notes over a three-inch speaker in a car radio and his touch is identifiable even as it is constantly changing”. (Time Remembered, record liner notes, Milestone Records, 1983).
Interview by John Liebman with Chuck Israels ForBassPlayersOnly (2014):

Enrico Pieranunzi

Enrico Pieranunzi , who played and recorded with Evans’ sidemen Paul Motian and Marc Johnson, wrote a book Bill Evans: The Pianist as an Artist (Continuum Books, 2004). He shows a great sensitivity to Bill’s music and life and speaks knowledgably about the melodies, harmonies and style. “Even more than his harmonic conceptions and voicings, the depth and honesty of the interpretation of his music mean to me the essential legacy of Bill Evans”. (Jazzman, November 1996) An interview about the book is published here with permission of Enrico Pieranunzi.

Sheet music and transcriptions

This link refers to a survey of songbooks, sheet music, play-alongs, transcriptions and stylistic collections of Bill Evans.

She joined Bill in tours of the southern US inquiring the various hotels to see if they accepted guests of both colors. “B Minor Waltz (For Ellaine) for his girlfriend Ellaine Schultz. “For Nenette” for his wife Nenette Zazarra, whom he married in 1973. “Maxine” for stepdaughter Maxine, daughter from a previous marriage of Nenette. “Letter To Evan” for his son Evan, born in 1975. “Laurie” for his last girlfriend Laurie Verchomin. “We Will Meet Again” on the suicide of his older brother Harry. “Song For Helen” and “One For Helen” for his lifelong manager Helen Keane. “Knit For Mary F” for a friend, Mary Frankson , who was a big fan, who made beautiful sweaters for him and the Evans family. “Re: Person I Knew” perhaps an anagram of the name of his Riverside producer Orrin Keepnews. The song “N.Y.C.’s No Lark” on “Conversations With Myself” is an anagram for pianist Sonny Clark’s name, like “Yet Ne’er Broken” for his cocaine supplier Robert Kenney. “Tiffany” is dedicated to drummer Joe LaBarbera’s daughter when she was 10 days old. She later wrote a lyric herself to Bill’s melody. “Comrade Conrad”, a tune Bill had written for Crest touthpaste. It had never been worked out. He dedicated it later to a photographer friend of Bill and Ellaine, Conrad Mendenhall , who was killed in a car accident.

The story of the “bootleg tape” of Bill Evans which Marc Johnson has been holding on for years after Bill’s death in 1980. “Here is Something For You” and “Evanesque” that Marc’s wife, the pianist Eliane Elias, transcribed from the original tape (FaceCulture, 2007).

“Peri’s Scope”

“B Minor Waltz” (For Ellaine)

“For Nenette”

“Laurie”

WILLIAM CLAXTON AND A SURVEY OF SOME MAJOR ISSUES ON THE ART OF JAZZ PHOTOGRAPHY

He is author of several books. In 1960, William Claxton and the noted German musicologist Joachim Berendt (The Jazz Book, 1953) traveled the United States on the trail of jazz music. The result of their collaboration was an amazing collection of photographs and recordings of legendary jazz artists published in the book Jazzlife. In 2003 a huge reedition (11.5 x 16 inch, 696 pages) of this important collection was published. A statement by William Claxton:

“That’s where jazz and photography have always come together for me. They’re alike in their improvisation and their spontaneousness. They happen at the same moment that you’re hearing something and you are seeing something, and you record it and it’s frozen forever.”

“As Bill Evans hunches over the keyboard there is so little to be seen – ear, hair, neck, a glimpse of spectacles – that he shouldn’t be recognisable but, like the lightest touch of his fingers on the keys, these few details are enough to identify him immediately and reveal the admonition at the heart of his technique: it takes more strength to caress the keys that to pound them.”

Written by Geoff Dyer in the Guardian, 2008: jazz photographer William Claxton, who has died aged 80, helped turn stars into legends with the improvised glamour of his shots.