During high school, Evans came in contact with 20th-century music like Stravinsky's Petrushka, which he called a "tremendous experience", and Milhaud's Suite provençale, whose bitonal language he believed "opened him to new things." Around the same time came his first exposure to jazz, when aged 12 he heard Tommy Dorsey and Harry James's bands on the radio. He later named Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert as composers whose work he often played. He soon dropped those instruments, but it is believed they later influenced his keyboard style. At the age of seven, Bill began violin lessons, and soon also flute and piccolo. He quickly developed a fluent sight-reading ability, but Leland considered Harry a better pianist. Įvans remembered Leland with affection for not insisting on a heavy technical approach, with scales and arpeggios. Bill was thought to be too young for lessons, but he began to play what he had heard during his brother's, and soon both were taking piano lessons. There, Harry began piano lessons somewhere between age 5 and 7 with local teacher Helen Leland. Given Harry Evans Sr.'s destructive character, Mary Evans often left home with her sons to go to nearby Somerville, to stay with her sister Justine and the Epps family. Bill had a brother, Harry (Harold), two years his senior, with whom he was very close. The marriage was stormy because of his father's heavy drinking, gambling, and abuse. His father was of Welsh descent and ran a golf course his mother was of Ukrainian ancestry and descended from a family of coal miners. Biography Early life Įvans grew up in North Plainfield, New Jersey, the son of Harry and Mary Evans (née Soroka). Evans received 31 Grammy nominations and seven awards, and was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame. Many of Evans's compositions, such as " Waltz for Debby" and " Time Remembered", have become standards, played and recorded by many artists. During the mid-1970s Bill Evans collaborated with the singer Tony Bennett on two critically acclaimed albums: The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album (1975) and Together Again (1977). In 1966, he met bassist Eddie Gómez, with whom he worked for the next 11 years. In 1963, Evans recorded Conversations with Myself, a solo album produced with overdubbing technology.
After months of seclusion, Evans reemerged with a new trio, featuring bassist Chuck Israels. However, ten days after this booking ended, LaFaro died in a car accident. In 1961, two albums were recorded at an engagement at New York's Village Vanguard jazz club, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby a complete set of the Vanguard recordings on three CDs was issued decades later. In late 1959, Evans left the Miles Davis band and began his career as a leader, with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, a group now regarded as a seminal modern jazz trio. In 1958, Evans joined Miles Davis's sextet, which in 1959, then immersed in modal jazz, recorded Kind of Blue, the best-selling jazz album ever. In 1955, he moved to New York City, where he worked with bandleader and theorist George Russell. His use of impressionist harmony, interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, block chords, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines continues to influence jazz pianists today.īorn in Plainfield, New Jersey, United States, he was classically trained at Southeastern Louisiana University and the Mannes School of Music, in New York City, where he majored in composition and received the Artist Diploma. William John Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer who worked primarily as the leader of his trio.
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