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Gil Evans | |
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.jpg) Gil Evans (1978) | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Gilmore Ian Ernest Green |
| Born | May 13, 1912 Toronto,Ontario, Canada |
| Died | March 20, 1988(1988-03-20) (aged 75) Cuernavaca, Mexico |
| Genres | |
| Occupations |
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| Instrument | Piano |
| Years active | 1933–1988 |
| Labels | |
| Website | gilevans |
Ian Ernest Gilmore Evans (néGreen; May 13, 1912 – March 20, 1988)[1] was aCanadian–Americanjazz pianist,arranger, composer andbandleader. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest orchestrators in jazz, playing an important role in the development ofcool jazz,modal jazz,free jazz, andjazz fusion. He is best known for his acclaimed collaborations withMiles Davis.[2]
Gil Evans was born inToronto, Canada, on May 13, 1912,[3] to Margaret Julia McConnachy.[4] Little is known about Evans's biological father, although a family friend said that he was a doctor who died before Evans was born.[4] Originally named Gilmore Ian Ernest Green, Evans took the last name of his step-father, John Evans, a miner.[4] The family moved frequently, living inSaskatchewan,British Columbia,Washington,Idaho,Montana, andOregon, migrating to wherever Evans's father could find work.[4] Eventually, the family ended up in California, first inBerkeley, where Evans attended the ninth and tenth grades, then inStockton,[5] where he attendedStockton High School, graduating in 1930.[6] During this time, Evans's father took a job with the Western Pacific Railroad, and Evans began living with friends, later renting a room in a boarding house.[7] After graduating, Evans attended theCollege of the Pacific in Stockton, where he founded his first jazz big band, Gil Evans & His Orchestra, in 1933, but then transferred toModesto Junior College.[6] After a year in Modesto, Evans left and moved back to Stockton.[8]
Evans became interested in music at an early age, listening toDuke Ellington,Louis Armstrong, andFletcher Henderson on the radio and on records.[5] He studied the piano and began learning how to arrange music, and started picking up jobs with local musicians. While in college, he founded his first band, which performed his arrangements, and which became the house band at theRendezvous Ballroom inBalboa Beach, California, in 1935.[3] The band toured the Pacific Northwest in 1937 and eventually settled inHollywood, where they regularly performed onBob Hope's radio show.[3] Evans's arrangements from this time showed the influence of classical music, and included instruments such as French horns, flutes, and tubas.[3] In 1939,Claude Thornhill was hired for Hope's show, and he became a major influence on Evans.[3]
Evans remained a Canadian citizen until he entered the US Army during the second World War. After 1946, he lived and worked primarily inNew York City, living for many years atWestbeth Artists Community.[2]
Between 1941 and 1948, Evans worked as an arranger for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra.[9] Even then, early in his career, his arrangements were such a challenge to musicians that bassist Bill Crow recalled that bandleader Thornhill would bring out Evans's arrangements "when he wanted to punish the band."[10] Evans's modest basement apartment behind a New York City Chinese laundry soon became a meeting place for musicians looking to develop new musical styles outside of the dominantbebop style of the day. Those present included the leading bebop performer,Charlie Parker, as well asGerry Mulligan andJohn Carisi.
In 1948, Evans, withMiles Davis, Mulligan, and others, collaborated on a band book for anonet.[9] These ensembles, larger than the trio-to-quintetcombos, but smaller thanbig bands which were on the brink of economic unviability, allowed arrangers to have a larger palette of colors by usingFrench horns andtuba.Claude Thornhill had employed hornistJohn Graas in 1942, and composer-arrangerBob Graettinger had scored for horns and tubas with theStan Kenton orchestra, but the "Kenton sound" was in the context of a dense orchestral wall of sound that Evans avoided. The Miles Davis-led group was booked for a week at theRoyal Roost as an intermission group on the bill with theCount Basie Orchestra.Capitol Records recorded 12 numbers by the nonet at three sessions in 1949 and 1950. These recordings were reissued on a 1957 Miles Davis LP titledBirth of the Cool.[9]
Later, while Davis was under contract withColumbia Records, producerGeorge Avakian suggested that Davis could work with any of several arrangers. Davis immediately chose Evans.[11] The three albums that resulted from the collaboration areMiles Ahead (1957),Porgy and Bess (1958), andSketches of Spain (1960).[9][12] Another collaboration from this period,Quiet Nights (1962) was issued later, against the wishes of Davis, who broke with his then-producerTeo Macero for a time as a result. Although these four records were marketed primarily under Davis's name (and credited toMiles Davis with Orchestra Under the Direction of Gil Evans), Evans's contribution was as important as Davis's. Their work coupled Evans's classic big band jazz stylings and arrangements with Davis's solo playing. Evans also contributed behind the scenes to Davis's classic quintet albums of the 1960s.
The demands of the score forPorgy and Bess were legendary, from the very first note for the lead trumpet. The limited time allotted for rehearsals revealed that the ability to read such a challenging score was not consistent among jazz musicians, and there are many audible errors. Yet the recording is now regarded by many as one of the greatest reinterpretations ofGershwin's music in any musical style, because Evans and Davis were each devoted to going outside the "mainstream" of commercial expectations for jazz musicians. Evans was a great influence on Davis's interest in "non-jazz" music, especially orchestral music. Unfortunately, Evans's orchestral scores from thePorgy and Bess sessions were later found to be incomplete (or simply lost), andQuincy Jones andGil Goldstein attempted to reconstruct these for Miles Davis's final 1991 concerts atMontreux, recorded asMiles & Quincy Live at Montreux. Davis had relented after years of refusing to revisit this material, but he was clearly ill, recovering frompneumonia, and trumpeterWallace Roney, who was mentored by Davis, covered many of the challenging passages. Davis died before the release of the album.
From 1957 onwards, Evans recorded albums under his own name. TubistBill Barber and trumpeterLouis Mucci from Thornhill's band were both stalwarts in Evans's early ensembles, with Mucci finding a spot on nearly every pre-1980s Evans recording. Among the featured soloists on these records wereLee Konitz,Jimmy Cleveland,Steve Lacy,Johnny Coles andCannonball Adderley. In 1965, he arranged the big band tracks onKenny Burrell'sGuitar Forms album.
Evans was influenced by Spanish composersManuel de Falla andJoaquín Rodrigo, and by other Latin and Brazilian music, as well as by German expatriateKurt Weill. His arrangements of pieces already well known to some listeners from their original cabaret, concert hall or Broadway stage arrangements, revealed aspects of the music in a wholly original way. Sometimes in an unexpected contrast to the original atmosphere of the piece, and sometimes taking a dark ballad such as Weill's "Barbara Song" into an even darker place.
The personnel list forThe Individualism of Gil Evans (1964), not only features Bill Barber and hornistsJames Buffington andJulius Watkins (along with two others), but each section features the cream of the younger (some more classically trained) musicians who were making their names in jazz. The presence of four of the most acclaimed young bassists (Richard Davis,Paul Chambers,Ron Carter, andBen Tucker) along with veteranMilt Hinton would ordinarily indicate that each is used individually for separate tracks, but Evans's scores usually required at least two bassists on any given track, some playingarco (with the bow) and somepizzicato (plucking with fingers, the standard jazz method). These arrangements frequently featured greatly slowed-down tempos withpolyrhythmic percussion and no prevailing "beat". To his by-now standard French horns and tuba, Evans's scores addedalto andbass flutes,double reeds, andharp; orchestral instruments not associated with "swing" bands, providing a larger palette of orchestral colors, and allowing him to attain the ethereal quality heard in his arrangements during his Thornhill days.[9] He frequently wrote a part for thetenor violin ofHarry Lookofsky. Yet, this album featured an orchestral arrangement of "Spoonful" by bluesmanWillie Dixon, an early indication of Evans's breadth and a hint of things to come.
In 1966, he recorded an album with Brazilian singerAstrud Gilberto,Look to the Rainbow.[13] He was discouraged by the commercial directionVerve Records was taking with the Gilberto sessions, and he went into a period of hiatus.
During this period while he was somewhat depressed about the commercial and logistical difficulties of his previous scoring requirements, his wife suggested that he listen to the guitaristJimi Hendrix. Evans developed a particular interest in the work of the rock guitarist. Evans gradually built another orchestra in the 1970s, with none of the coloration instruments from his past arrangements. Working in thefree jazz andjazz-rock idioms, he gained a new generation of admirers. These ensembles, rarely more than fifteen and frequently smaller, allowed him to make more contributions on keyboards, and with the development of truly portablesynthesizers, he began using these to provide additional color.[9] Hendrix's 1970 death precluded a scheduled meeting with Evans to discuss having Hendrix collaborate with a big band led by Evans.[14]
In 1974, he released an album of his, and other band members', arrangements of music by Hendrix with guitaristsJohn Abercrombie andRyo Kawasaki.[13] From then on Evans's ensembles featured electric instruments, i.e. guitars, basses, and synthesizers including a collaboration with bassistJaco PastoriusGil Evans & Jaco Pastorius – Live Under The Sky Tokyo '84. In contrast to his intricate scores for large ensembles, which required precision orchestral playing accompanying a single soloist, his later arrangements would feature more unison playing by the entire ensemble, such as on Hendrix's "Little Wing", with improvisational touches added throughout by the musicians.[9] Live recordings demonstrate that some entire pieces were collaborative efforts, and Evans can be heard giving cues from the keyboard (behind the band) to guide the band. Before the 1970s, his keyboard playing was generally sparse on recordings but after the 1970s he took a more active role in the rhythm section of the band.
Where Flamingos Fly (recorded 1971, released 1981) demonstrated his ability to contract the most accomplished musicians, with veterans Coles,Harry Lookofsky,Richard Davis andJimmy Knepper (who played the solo on the "Where Flamingos Fly" track on 1961'sOut of the Cool) alongside young multi-instrumentalistHoward Johnson, synthesizer playerDon Preston (at that time still a member ofThe Mothers of Invention), andBilly Harper.
In April 1983, the Gil Evans Orchestra was booked into theSweet Basil Jazz Club (Greenwich Village,New York) by jazz producer and Sweet Basil ownerHorst Liepolt. This turned out to be a regular Monday night engagement for Evans for nearly five years and also resulted in the release of a number of successful albums byGil Evans and the Monday Night Orchestra.[15][16] Evans's ensemble featured many of the top-call musicians in New York, many of whom were also in theNBCSaturday Night Live Band and there were many conflicts, so their "deputies" for the night might be other world-class musicians. Yet Evans was also known to let newcomers "sit in" occasionally. The band also performed arrangements by band members, current and past. Stalwarts in this ensemble wereLew Soloff,Alan Rubin,Marvin Peterson,Tom "Bones" Malone,George Adams,David Sanborn,Pete Levin,Hiram Bullock,Mark Egan, drummerKenwood Dennard, saxophonistBill Evans (no relation), andGil Goldstein.
In 1987, Evans recorded a live album withSting:Last Session – Live At Perugia Jazz Festival July 11, 1987, featuring the Monday Night Orchestra musicians, guest starBranford Marsalis and big band arrangements of songs by and withThe Police and Jimi Hendrix. In the same spirit of introducing new talent in his bands, he collaborated withMaria Schneider with her as an apprentice arranger on this and other final projects. His final project was Nov. 3 & 26, 1987, his arrangements for theLaurent Cugny Big Band in Paris, on the recording "Golden Hair" on Emarcy/Polygram.
In 1996, Columbia Record released a box set which besides the masterpieces, featured outtakes and rarities of Miles Davis and Gil Evans.[17]
Ryan Truesdell(de) began the Gil Evans Project, which resulted in a 2012 CD entitledCentennial, featuring previously unrecorded compositions and arrangements. These were produced with the permission of the Gil Evans estate, who gave Truesdell access to these scores and materials. Miles Evans, Gil's son, also led the Gil Evans Orchestra for a centennial concert at New York'sHighline Ballroom, featuring many of the musicians heard in the orchestra during Evans's lifetime.[18]
In 1986, Evans produced and arranged the soundtrack to the film of theColin MacInnes bookAbsolute Beginners, thereby working with such contemporary artists asSade Adu,Patsy Kensit's Eighth Wonder,the Style Council,Jerry Dammers,Smiley Culture,Edward Tudor-Pole, andDavid Bowie.
He also arranged the music for the 1986Martin Scorsese filmThe Color of Money.
Evans first married Lillian Grace following the 1949Birth of the Cool recording sessions. Very little is known about this marriage. In 1963, he married again. Evans was survived by his second wife, Anita (Cooper), and two children, Noah and Miles. His son Miles played trumpet in hisMonday Night Orchestra.[15]
Evans died ofperitonitis inCuernavaca, Mexico, contracting it shortly after a surgery for his prostate and subsequent travel to Mexico to recover. Evans died at the age of 75.[1]
Awarded as followings:[21]
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