Bill Evans

Training and New York

William John Evans was born on August 16, 1929 in Plainfield, New Jersey, and studied violin, flute and piccolo before the piano. He went to Southeastern Louisiana College from September 1946 on a flute scholarship and took a Bachelor of Music in piano in 1950, served in the Fifth U.S. Army Band at Fort Sheridan from 1951 to 1954, and began postgraduate composition at the Mannes School of Music in New York in July 1955. He worked with George Russell, and his first album as leader, New Jazz Conceptions (Riverside, recorded September 1956), sold about 800 copies in its first year.

In 1958 he joined Miles Davis's sextet, at Davis's urging, in April and left in November. He appeared on Cannonball Adderley's Portrait of Cannonball in July 1958, which includes "Nardis", and recorded Everybody Digs Bill Evans on December 15, 1958. He then played on the Kind of Blue sessions of March 2 and April 22, 1959, and wrote the liner notes. "Blue in Green" and "Flamenco Sketches" are credited to Davis, though many believe Evans wrote part or all of them; Evans took co-credit for "Blue in Green" on Portrait in Jazz.

The trios

The first Bill Evans Trio, with the bassist Scott LaFaro and the drummer Paul Motian, recorded Portrait in Jazz on December 28, 1959 and Explorations on February 2, 1961. At the Village Vanguard on June 25, 1961 they played five sets, recorded for Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby; LaFaro died in a car accident days later, ten or eleven according to different Wikipedia articles. Later trios included Chuck Israels (1962-1966), Eddie Gomez from 1966 for about 11 years with drummers such as Jack DeJohnette and Marty Morell, and finally Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera in 1979-1980.

Conversations with Myself (1963, overdubbed solo piano) won his first Grammy; Montreux (1968) and Alone (1968, released 1970) also won, and he made two albums with Tony Bennett in 1975 and 1977. He began using electric piano in 1969-1970. We Will Meet Again, recorded on August 6-9, 1979, was a tribute to his brother Harry and won the Grammy for best jazz instrumental album. Evans died in New York on September 15, 1980; his last recorded date on setlist.fm is September 14 at Fat Tuesdays.

Influence

Len Lyons called him the most influential pianist of the 1960s. Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Fred Hersch, Michel Petrucciani and Bruce Hornsby are among those he influenced, and Gyorgy Ligeti wrote play it like Bill Evans on his Fifth Piano Etude. He had 31 Grammy nominations, seven wins in his lifetime and a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. The documentary Bill Evans: Time Remembered (directed by Bruce Spiegel) draws on about 40 interviewees, and Peter Pettinger and Keith Shadwick each wrote a biography in 2002.