Here is the interview with Bill Evans, originally transcribed and published online by Allan Chase.īill Goldberg: And this portion of the Miles Davis Festival, we’re fortunate to have with us pianist-composer Bill Evans, and Bill was with Miles in the late ’50s, and he was on that classic recording Kind of Blue, which is still probably one of the best-selling jazz records. Since 1996, while continuing to teach and play, Chase has also been NEC’s chair of jazz studies and improvisation (1996 to 2001) dean of faculty, supervising classroom curriculum including jazz and contemporary improvisation (2000 to 2006) co-chair and then chair of contemporary improvisation (2005 to 2008) acting chair of liberal arts (2007 to 2008) and Berklee’s chair of ear training (2008 to present). The broadcast was from an audio cassette taped off the air live by Lewis Nash, listening in Bronxville, N.Y, then digitized from a copy of the recording in the late ’90s and transcribed by Chase between March 24 and May 8 of 2019.Ĭhase had been playing jazz and improvised music with professional musicians since 1975, and teaching it in colleges since 1981 at Berklee, Tufts and New England Conservatory. The second interviewer was Eddie Karp (according to Ashley Kahn), and the only known broadcast was July 4, 1979, on WKCR-FM in New York City, as part of the 126-hour Miles Davis Festival. It was taped by Bill Goldberg at Bill Evans’s Fort Lee, N.J., apartment - not at a radio studio - with interviewer Goldberg, and is shared with his written permission. I came across a blog curated by music college administrator and blogger Allan Chase with a detailed interview with pianist Bill Evans. I had to change the way the band sounded again for Bill’s style by playing different tunes, softer ones at first,” Davis had said.Īfter catching a recent screening of the Miles Davis documentary Birth of the Cool, I found it fascinating watching the interplay between musicians, especially the collaborative and compatible moments between Davis and Evans. ![]() The way he approached it, the sound he got was like crystal notes or sparkling water cascading down from some clear waterfall. “Bill had this quiet fire that I loved on piano. During this period Evans’s opportunities and focus on his own career would lead him to depart the group, then rejoin in early 1959 for the recording of Davis’s epic Kind of Blue. I was still listening, though by now I had it memorized.’ His fascination with the recording led to his decision to put Evans on the cover of Downbeat’s December 1960 edition.”Įvans would join Miles Davis’s band in April, 1958, replacing pianist Red Garland. This from Joe Maita in the blog, JerryJazzMusician: “In Lees’ essay The Poet: Bill Evans, he writes of his discovery of the great pianist in 1959, as editor of Downbeat, when he noticed, ‘among a stack of records awaiting assignment for review, a gold-covered Riverside album titled Everybody Digs Bill Evans… I took the album home and, sometime after dinner, probably about nine o’clock, put it on the phonograph. It was sometime in the late ’90s when I interviewed jazz journalist Gene Lees, who was central in elevating the mystique and publicizing the artistry of the brilliant pianist. Evans moved us into the modern piano era with follow-ups: Waltz for Debby, Portraits in Jazz, Sunday at the Village Vanguard, Undercurrents. I could hear it in Marvin Gaye’s music years down the road Little Anthony and the Imperials, jazz, soul, pop, they all owed Evans a firm handshake. The one solo piece - Peace, Piece - forever altered the landscape. The idea is that we become completely ‘calibrated’ with the click.Ī final note is that playing accurately at slow tempos with a metronome is harder than fast tempos.Evans tucked himself away in the corner of the brain in such a way that it was as if life was one eternal cycle of springtime - renewal and rebirth. ![]() ![]() I must admit that I find it hard to stick to this but I can see its benefits. ![]() Even better using a metronome because then there is no room for human error! I’ve met many musicians who advocate playing with a metronome 100% of their practice time. That would give you a better understanding of how the tune is commonly played.Īnd yes counting is a great way to keep you in time. The F7b9 chord falls on the 3rd beat of the bar.Īs with all jazz standards, both the melody and the harmony are open to interpretation by the performer/arranger.Ī good exercise would be to listen to a few of the famous versions and count where the melody and chords are being placed in the bar. According to the lead sheet, the melody note falls on the 2nd beat of the bar.
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