Not the usual jazz meets classical date

Email received - Pliable: I'm an American jazz & blues fan who's finally discovering classical/new music/Zen Buddhism due to your blog. Thank you very much for your efforts.

Was wondering if you've heard Kenny Wheeler's "Other People" (CAMJ 7801-2) yet? Its with the Hugo Wolf String Quartet and pianist John Taylor. Not really the usual "jazz meets classical" date; it's quite refreshing. KW actually sits out a few on his own record!

Also, David Munrow is on the (relatively) new Pentangle box (Sanctuary/Castle UK - cover above) from the early 70s. Apologies if this is all old news to you; I don't presume to know more than the Master! Thanks again for your blog. Kind regards, TE

Now read about Sweden's best kept secret.
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What exactly is live music?

"Way more than 50% of our output is live music ..." claims BBC Radio 3 controller Roger Wright in a revealing article about a new jazz radio station in today's Guardian.

But Radio 3's definition of live is slightly different to yours and mine. As I reported here in February 2007 virtually all evening concerts on Radio 3, except the Proms, are pre-recorded. But the BBC counts these recordings as 'live' performances, and the text streamed with their FM broadcasts describes them as 'live concert recordings'.

In a wonderful example of BBC corporate-crapola Radio 3 defines 'live' as any music recorded with an audience present. Which has important implications both for musicians who earn their living from live music making, as these recorded 'live' performances can be repeated, and for audiences, who may find real concerts with living breathing musicians disappearing.

If Roger Wright turned up at a concert hall for a 'live concert', and found a pre-recorded performance being played through speakers wouldn't he feel cheated? It's not a stupid question - that's what is actually happening in my header photo. Read about it here.
Header photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Kind of blue

Miles Davis was a very talented artist a regular reader reminds me in connection with my music and art thread. That is one of his paintings above, and there are more here. His art was just one of the reasons why Miles Davis was chosen as one of the thirty-six most influential people of the hippie era.
Image credit MilesDavis.com. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

A picture is worth a thousand words

When it comes to sleeve artwork Herbert von Karajan's wife may have got it wrong. But Joni Mitchell got it right. The two images here are from her 2000 album Both Sides Now. Joni provided these superlative self-portraits for the sleeve, and she worked with Vince Mendoza, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Peter Erskine and others to make an album which is a work of art in more ways than one.


More on Joni Mitchell the painter here, and more proof that pictures are worth a thousand words here.
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Music - what matters is money and power

What's the greatest threat to music? - The growing perception that what matters is money and power. In music, the real things of value are courage, trust, respect, being non-judgmental, and being able to share.

Says Herbie Hancock in today's Guardian. After that I really don't need to post anything else today. But I will. In fact another story about money and power is coming up in a few minutes.

Now take a journey with Jack Reilly.
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Remembering two of my heroes

Jazz pianist Bill Evans was born on August 16 1929. His influence has spread far beyond the jazz world.

Brother Roger, founder of the Taizé Community, was stabbed to death on August 16 2005 while at evening prayer in the Church of Reconciliation in Taizé. The influence of this ecumenical community has been felt throughout the Christian communion, and beyond. The photograph above of Brother Roger's grave in Taizé was taken by me last September. The article it was originally published in is the most frequently visited on the whole Overgrown Path , receiving thousands of hits every month, many from Wikipedia. (And this is the second most visited article.) In two weeks time we will be back on that remarkable green hill far away.

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Keith Jarrett through a lens darkly

I've posted a few complaints about mobile phones ringing during concerts myself. But how about this from Keith Jarrett at a recent concert in Italy?

With thanks to Jack Reilly for the heads-up.
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Osvaldo Golijov's cover job

Big thank you to Serenade in Green for noticing that György Ligeti was not the only contemporary composer influenced by Bill Evans. Now see some more gorgeous, and original, album covers here.
Undercurrents by Bill Evans and guitarist Jim Hall was first released on a Blue Note LP in 1963. Osvaldo Golijov's Oceana was released by Deutsche Grammophon in July 2007. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Identikit jazz trios

Went to hear the Bobo Stenson Trio (left) in Norwich last night. Technically wonderful but curiously uninvolving music. They are one of a growing number of identikit jazz piano trios. They all come from Scandinavia, are all squeaky-clean superb musicians, all have ECM recording contracts, all play somewhere on a continuum between Bill Evans and free jazz, and all drink the same brand of mineral water between numbers.

Berlin Philharmonic's first Black conductor

“At a concert this week in Berlin, Berlin's famed 65-year-old Philharmonic Orchestra was led by a U.S. war correspondent in battledress. Besides being a war correspondent, the guest conductor was a Negro, born in British Guiana. The 2,000 Berliners and the 500 Allied soldiers in the audience found it quite an experience. They applauded warmly when the conductor led the orchestra through Weber's familiar Oberon and Tchaikovsky's Pathétique. They broke into cheers, and called him back five times, when he gave them Berlin's first hearing of fellow-Negro William Grant Still's boisterous, bluesy Afro-American Symphony.

Slender, serious Rudolph Dunbar is no musical freshman. He studied at Manhattan's Julliard School, has several times conducted the London Philharmonic. He was in Berlin as correspondent for the Associated Negro Press of Chicago. Shortly before the Berlin Philharmonic's Conductor Leo Borchard was accidentally killed by U.S. sentries, he had invited Dunbar to guest-conduct. U.S. occupation authorities were all for it, though their interest was more in teaching the Germans a lesson in racial tolerance than in Dunbar's musicianship.”

The news story above was published in Time on September 10, 1945 when the career of Rudolph Dunbar was at its peak. Dunbar lived for another forty-three years, but what happened in those years to the first Black musician to conduct the Berlin and London Philharmonic Orchestras is a mystery. The story starts at the turn of the last century in British Guiana (now Guyana). The date of Dunbar’s birth is variously given as 1902 or 1907, and classical music was an unlikely career for a Black Guyanese boy at that time. But the young Dunbar’s interest was sparked by hearing transcriptions of Wagner and Elgar played in Georgetown by the British Guiana Militia Band. He joined the Militia Band as an apprentice clarinettist at the age of 14, and stayed with them for five years.


His talent was such that he left the band when he was 19 to study at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard) in New York, and lived in the city until he graduated in 1925. His subjects at the Juilliard were composition, clarinet and piano, but he was also active in the Harlem jazz scene, and was clarinet soloist on recordings by The Plantation Orchestra (photo above). While in New York he became a friend and champion of the African-American composer William Grant Still, and their correspondence is held today at the University of Arkansas.

In 1925 Dunbar moved to Paris as a post-graduate, studying conducting with Philippe Gaubert (below), and composition with Paul Vidal and clarinet with Louis Cahuzac. He also spent time with Felix Weingartner in Vienna. Dunbar’s reputation as a clarinettist grew, and reached the widow of Claude Debussy who invited him to give a private recital in her apartment in 1930 for members of the Paris Conservatoire.

Dunbar moved to London in 1931 to work as a music critic, and he also started the first ever clarinet school, which attracted students from around the world. His reputation was such that in 1939 he was commissioned to write a textbook on the clarinet, and his Treatise on the Clarinet (Boehm System) became the standard reference work for the instrument. It remained in print though ten editions, and today commands high prices as a collectors item.

Dunbar remained active as a jazz musician, and in the 1930s in Britain he led two jazz groups, the All British Coloured Band (also known as the Rumba Coloured Orchestra), and Rudolph Dunbar and his African Polyphony, and made pioneering recordings of West Indian music with both these groups. He also composed, and his 1938 ballet score Dance of the Twenty-First Century (described by Dunbar as ‘ultra modern’), which was written for the famous Cambridge University Footlights Club, was broadcast nationally by NBC with the composer conducting.

The outbreak of war in Europe opened up conducting opportunities for Dunbar, and in 1942 he led the London Philharmonic in the Royal Albert Hall in a concert that was described at the time as a fund-raiser for “Britain’s coloured allies”. He wrote for the Associated Negro Press of Chicago, and this gave him credentials as a war correspondent in Europe. He took part in the Normandy Landings with a Black regiment, and was the first foreigner to conduct a symphony orchestra in Paris after it was liberated, and then went on to conduct in Berlin.

In 1945 Dunbar presented a Festival of American Music in the Théatre des Champs Elysees, Paris with the Conservatoire Orchestra and pianist Jeanne-Marie Darré. The programme included the premiere of In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy by William Grant Still (right), as well as Still's Afro-American Symphony. The following year Dunbar made his US conducting debut with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony in a programme that again included Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony. In other concerts he programmed the music of the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor (photo below).

Dunbar was a pioneering activist against racism. When asked at his US debut if he would settle in the country he replied: “I think I will make my home in Paris where, if you are good, they will applaud you whether you are pink, white or black, and if you are bad they will whistle at you.” But he was also supportive of the US, and objected to the British Government promoting his career for political ends, saying “It is not the British who have done it for me, it is the Americans.”

At the end of the war the promise was immense. Dunbar was established as a leading performer and authority on the clarinet, his conducting career was in the ascendant as concert life restarted, and he was seen as a role-model for West Indians. But the promise wasn’t fulfilled. Dunbar is documented as being the first black conductor of a symphony orchestra in Poland (1959), and Russia (1964), both concerts were in Soviet bloc countries at the peak of the Cold War. He promoted concerts for the Jamaican Hurricane Relief Fund in 1951, and toured British Guiana in the 1950s conducting the country’s Militia Band, Philharmonic Orchestra and a youth choir. Rudolph Dunbar died in London in June 1988.

Were Dunbar's conducting talents simply eclipsed by de-Nazified conductors returning to the podium after the war, or were there other reasons why the promise wasn't fulfilled? Exactly what happened remains a mystery, but there are some tantalising clues. Dunbar's brief obituary in the Musical Times says: 'He gradually withdrew from public life, and devoted himself to fighting racism and trying to increase black involvement in Western art music.

But there seems to be more to it than a gradual withdrawal from public life. It is known that Dunbar conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. One of the leading authorities on music in Guyana is Dr Vibert C. Cambridge at Ohio University, and in an article for the Stabroek News in Guyana in August 2004 Dr Cambridge quotes from an interview Rudolph Dunbar gave six months before his death in 1988:

“Dunbar spoke about the particular vindictiveness of a producer/director of music at the BBC who derailed his musical career in Europe. Dunbar described that director of music as “despicable and vile” and the BBC “as stubborn as mules and ruthless as rattlesnakes”.

Today Rudolph Dunbar (left) is remembered as a one of a pioneering group of West Indians who fought racism in the UK. The musician who was the first Black conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and who wrote a standard reference work on the clarinet, does not warrant a single mention in the current or earlier editions of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, or other major music reference books. Why remains a mystery.

Sources:
* Rudolph Dunbar by Dr Vibert C. Cambridge, Stabroek News August 22, 2004
* W. Rudolph Dunbar: Pioneering Orchestra Conductor, The Black Perspective in Music, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 193-225
* Rudolph Dunbar, The Musical Times, Vol. 129, No. 1749 (Nov., 1988), p. 619
* Debut in the Bowl, Time Sept 02 1946
* Rhythm in Berlin, Time Sept 10 1945
* The Pantheon of West Indian Heroes Framed, Black Britain, July 8 2006.
* Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, and the Americans, 1945-1953, by David Monod, NewMusicBox Oct 24 2006.
* Listeners to the BBC Radio 4 programme on Rudolph Dunbar broadcast on August 7 2007 should read Echoes of Rudolph Dunbar on the BBC.
(c) Bob Shingleton 2007

Now read about Multicultural, multimedia, and banned.
I have contacted Dr Cambridge for more information on the later years of Rudolph Dunbar's career. Other information from readers is very welcome, updates will be published. With thanks to John McLaughlin Williams who read a draft of this article. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Multicultural, multimedia, and banned

In 1925 New York bandleader Sam Wooding's all-black jazz revue Chocolate Kiddies toured to Berlin (photo above). Among the audience were composers Ernst Krenek and Kurt Weill. Krenek had studied in Vienna under Frank Schreker, and was married Gustav Mahler's daughter Anna for a short while. His compositions include an opera written to a libretto by the expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka.

Chocolate Kiddies inspired Ernst Krenek (photo below) to write his jazz influenced opera Jonny Spielt Auf (Johnny Strikes Up) which was premiered in Leipzig in January 1927, and opened at the City Opera in Berlin ten months later. Jazz was anathema to the ascendant Nazi party due to its African-American origins, but despite this Jonny Spielt Auf achieved major success with audiences across Europe, and was translated into twelve languages. The Center for Jazz Arts describes the opera as having "jazz-infused harmonies, syncopations, and story-lines; an African-American jazz-artist hero (Jonny); interracial romantic story elements; innovative Expressionist and Bauhaus influenced stage sets; and an unconventional incorporation of modern technology into classical opera, such as telephones, radios, and automobiles."

When Jonny Spielt Auf was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1928 the plot was altered so that the promiscuous black jazz band leader who gives the opera its title could be played by a white. But then in a bizarre twist the title role was actually sung by a 'blacked-up' white singer. This prompted the early civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson to say: 'We have in this country colored singers who could masterfully sing that role. I need only name Jules Bledsoe and Paul Robeson.'

Ernst Krenek's name was put on the Nazis' blacklist in 1933. He was based in Vienna until 1938 but was expelled after the Anschluss. He lived in the US until his death in 1991, although in the last decade of his life he spent summers at the Arnold Schönberg House in Mödling, near Vienna. The year after his death in Palm Springs Krenek's remains were transferred to an honorary grave in Vienna.

* The 1993 Decca recording of Jonny Spielt Auf, with Lothar Zagrosek conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, is available through Amazon Germany. There are some brief audio extracts via this link. The slightly more idiomatic Vanguard recording (left) with the Wiener Staatsopernorchester and Lucia Popp is deleted, but is still available from Amazon resellers. Visit the Ernst Krenek Institute website via this link.

Now read more about contemporary music under the Third Reich in Furtwängler and the forgotten new music
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Joanna MacGregor and Andy Sheppard live

It's almost midnight here in the UK and we've just returned from hearing Joanna MacGregor and Andy Sheppard at The Forum in Norwich. Live music rules, jazz rules, Joanna MacGregor sounds more and more like Keith Jarrett, and Andy Sheppard sounds more and more like Charles Lloyd.

For more on the inspired duo of Joanna MacGregor and Andy Sheppard read Commercially jazz is in a bad way.
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Alice Coltrane - a jazz supreme

Alice Coltrane, the jazz performer and composer who was inextricably linked with the music of her late husband, legendary saxophonist John Coltrane, has died in Los Angeles. She was 69. Here, in tribute, is an article I ran in August last year.

It's a Sunday afternoon in the Fillmore section of San Francisco, and at the Church of St John Coltrane the service is in full swing. The church's founder, His Eminence Archbishop Franzo King, a tall, stick-thin 60-year-old dressed in a white cassock with a green scarf and a fuchsia pink skullcap, is dancing in front of an 8ft-high Byzantine-style icon that depicts John Coltrane holding a saxophone with flames emerging from it, a gold halo around his head.

The archbishop's son, Rev Franzo King Jr, on tenor saxophone, is playing a version of Lonnie's Lament, from Coltrane's album Crescent, that eventually merges into Spiritual. A choir led by Archbishop King's wife Marina is singing the Lord's Prayer over the music, while a four-piece band (with his daughter Wanika on bass) accompanies them. Thirty or so congregants are crowded into the tiny room, the air thick with the smell of incense. Some are dancing and clapping and saying Hallelujah! while others are sitting with eyes closed in silent meditation. In a corner, the 11-year-old Franzo King III blows on his own horn.

The centrepiece of the "Coltrane liturgy" is his 1964 album, A Love Supreme, what the church calls his "testimony". As the band goes into Acknowledgement, the first part of A Love Supreme, the choir sings the words to Psalm 23. When they reach the part where, on the album, Coltrane chants the words "A Love Supreme" over and over like a mantra, Archbishop King walks among the congregation with a microphone. "Let's have some love!" he yells. "Don't just take it! Give!"

From Ministry of sound in the Guardian. And now hear A Love Supreme Part 1 complete (7' 43") and watch the video online.

John Coltrane saw his album-length suite A Love Supreme as his gift to God. The album was recorded by John Coltrane's quartet on December 9, 1964 at the Van Gelder studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The album is a four-part suite, broken up into tracks called "Acknowledgement" (which contains the famous mantra that gave the suite its name), "Resolution," "Pursuance," and "Psalm." It is intended to be a spiritual album, broadly representative of a personal struggle for purity. The final track, "Psalm," uniquely corresponds to the wording of a devotional poem Coltrane included in the liner notes. A Love Supreme is usually listed among the greatest jazz albums of all time. It was ranked eighty-second in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time. The elements of harmonic freedom heard on this album indicated the changes to come in Coltrane's music.

* For more on the African Orthodox Church of St John Coltrane, 351 Divisadero St. San Francisco, CA follow this link.

Image credit Fly.co.uk. Notes on A Love Supreme based on Wikipedia. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Love of the blues

Free MP3 downloads as jazz station launches

A new online and UK digital radio jazz station launched on Christmas Day. Playing bepop to contemporary, theJazz is coming from the same stable as Classic FM. With 6.3 million listeners Classic FM is the UK's most successful commercial station, and the audience grabbed by its its smooth classics format has been a major factor in the dumbing down of BBC Radio 3. If theJazz follows Classic FM's easy listening formula it isn't going to push the envelope too far. But let's give it the benefit of the doubt. You can listen via this link, and to be totally cool theJazz is offering some free downloads until January 2nd. They include Bill Evans, John Coltrane and Miles Davis, just follow this link.

Now push the envelope a little more with A jazz supreme.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Sweden's best kept secret - Jan Johansson

Sweden is famous for its jazz. Most recently the home grown Esbjorn Svensson Trio has become a worldwide success. Yet the best selling jazz record in Sweden was made by an artist virtually unknown outside Scandinavia, and whose records are very difficult to get hold of.

The artist is pianist Jan Johansson (photo above). The recording is Jazz på svenska (Jazz in Swedish), and it has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Johansson was born in 1931, and met saxophonist Stan Getz while at university. He abandoned his studies to play jazz fulltime, and worked with many American jazz greats, becoming the first European ever to be invited to join "Jazz at the Philharmonic."

The years 1961 to 1968 produced a string of classic albums. These included Jazz på svenska and Jazz på Ryska (Jazz in Russia) which are available together on a single CD titled Folkvisor. Jazz in Sweden comprises variations on sixteen Swedish folk songs with George Riedel playing bass. Also worth exploring is Musik genom Fyra Sekler (Music from the Past Centuries) which is another exploration of traditional Swedish melodies using larger forces. There were also two excellent trio sets, 8 Bittar and Innertrio, which again have been issued as a single CD.

In November 1968 Jan Johansson was killed in a car crash on his way to a church concert in a church concert in Jönköping, Sweden. He was just 37.

For reasons which are very difficult to understand Jan Johansson has remained relatively unknown outside Sweden. His son, Anders Johansson, runs Heptagon Records which does an invaluable job of keeping his recordings available. But they are still surprisingly difficult to find. I bought mine from the oddly named, but very efficient CD Baby who are based in Portland, Oregon.

Here to give you a taste of what the rest of the world has been missing are eight minutes of Jan Johansson courtesy of the Heptagon Records web site:

Folkvisor (Two samples 2' 08" & 1' 41"): - -

Musik genom Fyra Sekler (3' o"): -

8 Bittar and Innertrio (1' 52"): -

If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Fairytales - an album beyond words

* This article was originally published on October 3, 2005, and is reblogged here as part of On An Overgrown Path's second anniversary celebration of Music beyond borders. Follow this link to read the comments posted to the original article.

Sweden's best kept secret - Jan Johansson

Sweden is famous for its jazz. Most recently the home grown Esbjorn Svensson Trio has become a worldwide success. Yet the best selling jazz record in Sweden was made by an artist virtually unknown outside Scandinavia, and whose records are very difficult to get hold of.

The artist is pianist Jan Johansson (photo above). The recording is Jazz på svenska (Jazz in Swedish), and it has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Johansson was born in 1931, and met saxophonist Stan Getz while at university. He abandoned his studies to play jazz fulltime, and worked with many American jazz greats, becoming the first European ever to be invited to join "Jazz at the Philharmonic."

The years 1961 to 1968 produced a string of classic albums. These included Jazz på svenska and Jazz på Ryska (Jazz in Russia) which are available together on a single CD titled Folkvisor. Jazz in Sweden comprises variations on sixteen Swedish folk songs with George Riedel playing bass. Also worth exploring is Musik genom Fyra Sekler (Music from the Past Centuries) which is another exploration of traditional Swedish melodies using larger forces. There were also two excellent trio sets, 8 Bittar and Innertrio, which again have been issued as a single CD.

In November 1968 Jan Johansson was killed in a car crash on his way to a church concert in a church concert in Jönköping, Sweden. He was just 37.

For reasons which are very difficult to understand Jan Johansson has remained relatively unknown outside Sweden. His son, Anders Johansson, runs Heptagon Records which does an invaluable job of keeping his recordings available. But they are still surprisingly difficult to find. I bought mine from the oddly named, but very efficient CD Baby who are based in Portland, Oregon.

Here to give you a taste of what the rest of the world has been missing are eight minutes of Jan Johansson courtesy of the Heptagon Records web site:

Folkvisor (Two samples 2' 08" & 1' 41"): - -

Musik genom Fyra Sekler (3' o"): -

8 Bittar and Innertrio (1' 52"): -

If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Fairytales - an album beyond words

Ligeti's Etudes fit the Bill

Milestone Record’s extraordinary 8 CD set ‘Bill Evans Trio the last waltz’ was recorded on eight successive evenings at Keystone Korner in North Beach, San Francisco in September 1980. Just thirty-two different compositions are featured in the nine hours of music, and nine of those are Bill Evans (right) originals.

This is literally music making on the brink. Miles Davis’ Nardis makes five obsessive appearances. Several of these include epic piano solos, and the longest Nardis cut lasts for seven seconds short of twenty minutes. Evans knew he was on the edge, and he wanted to leave his definitive version of Nardis before he went over.

The final Keystone session was on September 8th 1980. Seven days later Evans was dead from the effects of cocaine dependency.

It is a mark of the importance of Bill Evans that Gyorgy Ligeti cited him as one of the influences on his seminal Etudes for solo piano. The other eclectic influences credited by Ligeti are traditional African music, the player-piano studies of Conlon Nancarrow, and the jazz piano writing of Thelonious Monk.

The classical connection comes as no surprise. Recalling his childhood in New Jersey Evans said: “I can remember, for instance, the 78 album of Petruschka which I got early on in high school as a Christmas present – a requested Christmas present. And just about wearing it out, learning it. That was the kind of music that at that time I hadn’t been exposed to, and it was just a tremendous experience to get into that piece. I remember first hearing some of Milhaud’s polytonality and actually a piece that he may not think too much of – it was an early piece called Suite Provençale – which opened me up to certain things.”

Evans went on to a musical scholarship at Southeastern Louisiana College fifty miles outside New Orleans. His studies there included sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven, and works by Debussy, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Ravel Gershwin (the Piano Concerto in F), Milhaud, Khachaturian and Villa-Lobos. His senior recital included a group of Dmitry Kabalevsky’s recently published Preludes. Literature was another passion. He was something of an authority on Thomas Hardy, and his heroes included the visionary18th century artist and poet William Blake.

Bill Evans carried heavy emotional baggage through his 51 years. He played on Miles Davies’ iconoclastic Kind of Blue, and then pretty well defined the jazz trio format. Without a doubt his two greatest trio recordings are Waltz for Debby and Sunday at the Village Vanguard, both recorded live in one day in June 1961 at Seventh Avenue South, New York. These are two of the greatest jazz CD’s ever. No, they are two of the greatest CD’s ever. The trio plays as a totally integrated unit underpinned by the masterly bass playing of Scott LaFaro. Ten days after the recording LaFaro was dead, killed in an automobile smash.

If you don’t know the two Village Vanguard recordings I urge you to buy them. Forget about the fact that this is jazz. This is intimate chamber music making that is up there with the greatest trios like the Beaux Arts and Florestan. These are two recording classics, and they should be in everyone’s collection.

Following LeFaro’s tragically early death Evans spent years trying to put another dream trio together. In those years he produced some fine music, but never attained the heights of his work with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. The solo recordings from this period are worth exploring, including his pioneering work with over-dubbing.

During the 1970’s Bill Evans creative flame burnt less brightly. Many recordings from these years seem to be no more than re-workings of his own compositions and standards. But towards the end of the 70’s a renewed energy and drive emerged, fuelled by working with the younger bass and drums team of Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera.

Those final Keystone sessions revitalise Bill Evans classics like Letter to Evan, Turn Out the Stars, and Waltz for Debby. But that is where we joined this overgrown path…..

Bill Evans would have been seventy-six on August 16th.

..................................................................................

Bill Evans' recorded legacy is considerable. The Fantasy catalogue is the best starting point for exploration. The written literature is also comprehensive. Peter Pettinger's 'Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings" is the definitive biography. Keith Shadwick's "Bill Evans, Everything Happens To Me - a musical biography" is more sumptuously produced, but is less scholarly in its approach.

For further exploration of jazz piano as a musical form Robert L. Doerschuk's 'The Giants of Jazz Piano' and Len Lyons' 'The Great Jazz Pianists' are a good starting point.

If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Improvisation