Bill Evans Research Paper

Bill Evans was one of the white jazz musicians who were accepted as powerful innovators (Gridley 1978). Since he was a little child, he was largely interested in music and started learning various instruments. He began learning about classical music more in depth as he got into college and later came to be called the “Chopin of the modern jazz piano” (Tirro 1993). He developed his own distinctive musical style while working as a sideman with Miles Davis, and working as a bandleader of three trios. Later on, he received seven Grammy awards for his recordings and was even posthumously granted a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. This paper will examine few of his influential techniques and works as well as their impact on the structure

of jazz and jazz musicians later on.
First of all, Bill Evans is well known for relaxing jazz improvisation. As he got into a college, he was formally educated in classical music and traditional jazz music more in depth. He acquired various techniques to maximize his inspiration and to combine written out classical music and jazz improvisation in his play (Gioia 2011). In terms of improvisation, he showed a high level of spontaneity in playing jazz. He worked on re-harmonizing the melody structure in a short time and created a warm and beautiful sound based on the framework of an original piece (Israels 1995). On top of that, his slow to medium tempo contributed to making the music more relaxing and soft. For instance, Bill Evans showed a light touch on the keyboard and Jim Halls also played guitar with soft hands on their collaboration album called Undercurrent, making it to be comfortable and calming for the audience to listen to (Gioia 2011).
Don Friedman’s work is one of the examples that were influenced by Bill Evans’ relaxing jazz improvisation. Chuck Israels and Joe Hunt, who worked with Don Friedman, were previously the members of Bill Evans Trio, which influenced Don Friedman. For instance, Circle Waltz, the second album of the Friedman Trio, presented their distinctive lyricism and sense of melody from Bill Evans. However, they still displayed a melodic sound and classical form, producing elegant and delicate music that were similar to Bill Evans (Yannow 2008).
Second, Bill Evans’ rhythmic and harmonic innovation had a large impact on modern jazz.

He was a creative composer who used the basic jazz unit of eighth notes as well as various other notes. He often began with simple and short rhythms and extended it with increasing complexity then ended it in a burst of notes that resolved those complexities. This rhythmic technique was influenced by early pianists including Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz , but none of them came up with the integration of many sources at once like Bill Evans did (Israel 1995). In terms of harmony, Evans spent hours studying the theoretical harmonic structure of any music piece he was working on before writing his own music. Then, he built his own ideas on top of the body of principles from the original piece (Ginell 2013). He often took a phrase from the existing piece and used his unique ideas to accompany it in order to develop its rhythms and melody lines. He not only focused on developing new chords and strange intonations but also on chord voicings. For instance, he composed “Flamenco Sketches” from the Kind of Blue album based on the harmonic structure and tempo on “Peace Piece” and “Some Other Time”. Thus, these three songs all have similar patterns in their harmony and tempo (Kahn

2007).
His rhythm and harmonic structure had a great impact not only on pianists but also other jazz instrumentalists. John Taylor was one of the pianists who were influenced by Bill Evans’ musical style. He learned from Bill Evans’ light touch on keyboards and highly delicate chords to develop his own unique sound. Later pianists worked on re-harmonizing their compositions applying the similar harmonic structures Evans used. In addition, Gary Burton, a vibraphonist considered Bill Evans as his main inspiration when approaching vibraphone (Tirro 1998).
Third, Bill Evans took an important role in the Miles Davis Sextet. He worked as one of the members of Davis’ sextet only for six months. In a short period, his outstanding compositional ability and his introduction of a new technique had a great contribution to the sextet. He not only composed “Blue in Green” from Kind of Blue, which is one of the biggest selling jazz albums, but also introduced the concepts of modal jazz to Miles Davis. The chord progression in modal jazz was created on individual scales or modes for a prolonged time (Pettinger 1998). There are fewer chord changes and each chord allows people to explore the nuance of color more in depth. With more time and freedom, musicians could melodically improvise more easily. Miles Davis applied modal jazz into his song “So What” from Kind of Blue (Pettinger 1998). This presented how improvised melody and harmony are strongly related to each other, influencing generations of musicians.
The modal jazz that Bill Evans and Miles Davis developed together through Kind of Blue largely influenced musicians in later periods. For instance, Dave Holland, a composer and double bassist, produced an album Homecoming based on modal jazz. Though it was quite far from modal compositions, owing to more typical chord progressions, it still highlighted an importance on melody rather than harmonic density. In addition, Silver Hollow composed by Jack deJohnette worked on a chord for a long time, but presented more key changes (Tirro 1993).
Lastly, Bill Evans Trio was recognized as one of the greatest jazz piano trios in jazz history.

The group was comprised of Bill Evans, the pianist and composer, Scott LaFaro, the double bassist, and Paul Motion, the drummer. Most trios at that time distributed the roles unequally among members, but Bill Evans’ trio was regarded as a more egalitarian group. Since he emphasized the highly interactive improvisation among three members, he gave the double bassist and the drummer an active role as much as that of the pianist (Berardinelli 1992). On top of that, they avoided the most obvious beats and abandoned walking bass. They did not emphasize every beat, but still made the tempo present in the music piece. Followed by the first album, Portrait in Jazz, the last two, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby albums they recorded were released in 1961. He was well known for being very critical of his work, but he showed satisfaction with these last recordings and viewed these as the peak of the musical performance of his trio (Berardinelli 1992). Unfortunately, LaFrao’s tragic death ceased the interplay of his trio and Evans stopped recording for a year due to his deep

sorrow.
Bill Evans’ democratic musical unit inspired many big bands and musicians including Wynton Marsalis, a classical trumpet player and a bandleader. Wynton Marsalis’ jazz band was formed based on the principles of democracy, encouraging greater interplay among musicians (Marsalis 2008). All members presented their individual artistic expression with personal freedom while retaining common ground with other musicians. They equally participated in the performance to create the sound of democracy, which features one of the critical characteristics of Bill Evans’ trio.
Overall, Bill Evans was a giant of jazz piano. Not only his musical style and techniques but also his work and performance had a powerful influence on many musicians. His relaxing classical jazz improvisation with his harmonic and rhythmic concepts had a lasting impact on Don Friedman, John Taylor, Gary Burton and many other pianists in different ways. On top of that, Dave Holland, Jack deJohnette, Wynton Marsalis and other musicians were inspired by his work with Miles Davis Sextet and his own trios. His music continuously inspires young pianists of today including Fred Hersch, Bill Charlap, and Lyle Mays (Israels 1995).