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Bill Evans: Alone and Alone-ish · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Dissler, and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings.
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  You can subscribe to the Piano Maven podcast through my sub stack page by clicking on the
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  link in the episode description.
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  Paid subscribers get bonuses such as Piano Maven Zoom meetings, where we share listening
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  experiences and meet special guests.
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  So please consider subscribing to help us reach out further into the piano community
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  and to keep this podcast in production throughout the year.
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  I haven't done a jazz episode in a while, and I've promised some of our subscribers
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  that I would be talking more about jazz piano on these episodes.
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  The influence of Bill Evans on modern jazz piano cannot be underestimated.
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  Certainly the main influences that he brought to his style came from Bud Powell, Horace
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  Silver, Lenny Tristano, and George Shearing, and also Milt Buckner in certain ways, especially
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  with the locked hands chord technique, playing parallel chords in both hands with the melody
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  on top.
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  However, Bill Evans' own way of voicing chords and his own way of building improvised lines
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  was totally original and his style helped pave the way for pianists like Herbie Hancock,
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  Chick Corea, and Keith Jarrett, and countless others.
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  Perhaps the most startling innovation that Bill Evans brought to the table, and it really
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  was a group innovation essentially, it was his approach to the classic jazz piano, bass,
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  and drums trio setting.
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  Or the Bill Evans Trio, bass and drums essentially were timekeepers providing a steady support
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  for whatever the piano was doing.
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  But with the trio that Bill Evans had with bassist Scott LeFaro and drummer Paul Modian,
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  each instrument became an equal partner.
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  You had continuous conversation where a bass line did not have to keep a steady walking
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  pattern but could break away instead from that and respond to piano lines with lines
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  of its own.
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  And the same went for the drums so that the beat was more implied than stated.
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  And this created a very mobile and flexible and fluid ensemble texture like improvised
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  chamber music.
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  And this kind of rhythm section concept began to manifest itself in the various Miles Davis
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  ensembles of the 1960s.
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  But for this episode, I'm going to be talking about Bill Evans as a solo pianist as well
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  as a pianist who used multi-tracking to record what he called conversations with myself.
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  In January 1963, he recorded an album called conversations with myself which consisted
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  of multi-track selections involving three separate piano tracks.
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  Actually one selection, Blue Monk, just had two piano tracks but the rest had three piano
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  tracks.
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  And the rhythmic subtleties that characterized his piano, bass and drums trio emerge on three
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  pianos with marvelous creative interplay throughout this album.
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  And what's amazing to me still is that no matter how thick the textures can get, nothing
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  ever ever sounds cluttered.
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  In 1967, Bill Evans recorded an album called further conversations with myself which only
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  involved two double-tracked pianos.
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  And it's a beautiful album in many ways.
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  Maybe it's not rhythmically as interesting as the three piano things from 1963.
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  And then in 1978, Bill Evans recorded an album called new conversations where he mixes and
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  matches going between two and three acoustic pianos although actually one of the pianos
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  is a Fender Rhodes electric piano.
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  So sometimes you have two acoustics and one electric or one acoustic with one electric
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  or you'll have two acoustic pianos.
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  And then he has one solo track which is a gorgeous interpretation of Duke Ellington's
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  song reflections in D. And I personally find the sound of the electric piano, the Fender
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  Rhodes piano, a little bit dated.
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  But I think that Bill Evans plans his textures and structures, his arrangements, perhaps
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  with less casualness than before and with more care.
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  And I can understand why he was especially proud of this album.
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  Bill Evans also recorded two solo piano albums.
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  The best known of the two is his 1968 release titled Alone.
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  And the way that he puts these five songs together almost feels like a suite in terms
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  of what the song selections are as well as his choice of keys.
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  So the songs on side one, we're thinking about the LP format, are Here's That Rainy Day,
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  A Time for Love, Midnight Mood, and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
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  And the second side is just one song.
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  It's an extended improvisation on the song Never Let Me Go.
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  It lasts about 15 minutes.
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  The playing goes between subtle introspection and unfettered linear improvisation.
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  And the mood is both exploratory and controlled at the same time.
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  In 1975, Bill recorded an album called Alone Again.
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  I find this release less persuasive, although it's more spontaneous and much looser in
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  regard to how Bill just dives into playing one improvised chorus after another on the
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  touch of your lips, in your own sweet way, make someone happy, and what kind of fool
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  am I.
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  But then he plays the song People, you know, that song by Sammy Kahn and Julie Stein from
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  the musical Funny Girl that Barbra Streisand made famous.
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  You know, people, people who need people.
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  Forgive my singing.
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  And basically, Bill just plays the melody over and over and over again.
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  First he plays it in the key of B flat, and then he plays it in the key of E major, and
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  then he goes back to B flat, then he goes back to E major, and he just does this over
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  and over and over again.
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  And he doesn't improvise at all.
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  It's basically just stating the melody, and he changes the harmonizations a little bit,
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  not too much, and the nuances of phrasing, but perhaps it's too much of a good thing.
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  I've put links in this episode description where one can get to these Bill Evans recordings,
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  as well as links to particular tracks that I especially love, such as the theme from
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  Spartacus from Conversations with Myself.
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  And I've also placed a link to an article that I wrote about my working relationship
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  with Bill Evans.
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  He arranged that I could be both the editor and transcriber for a book of his piano solos,
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  where I transcribed the music directly from the recordings.
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  I did not know Bill Evans very well, I have to admit.
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  But we did have one long telephone working session on the book.
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  And we would always talk whenever I'd go hear him play at the Village Vanguard.
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  And he even drove me home once to my apartment years and years ago.
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  And apropos to what we usually talk about on the piano maven, Bill Evans had a thorough
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  knowledge of the standard repertoire.
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  He was totally classically trained.
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  By all accounts, he was supposed to be an amazing sight reader.
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  I never saw that firsthand, but everyone I know who witnessed Bill sight reading said
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  that he could really play anything up to tempo, especially things like the Rachmaninoff Preludes
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  or anything of Bach or Bartok.
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  I had a friend who attested to this, that he saw Bill sight read the first Boulez piano
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  sonata.
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  I'm not sure if my friend was telling the truth, but I would love that to be true.
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  But in any case, in one of my conversations with Bill, I remember very vividly that we
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  were talking about our mutual love of Rachmaninoff's own recordings as a pianist.
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  And I remember when I had that big working telephone meeting with Bill, I was living
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  in Queens in New York City.
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  I was roommates with the late producer and musicologist Alan Evans, who already at that
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  time was a serious scholar of historic piano recordings.
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  And when I was living at Alan's apartment that year, he would let me make tapes of his
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  78s.
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  This was long before compact discs, and this was a time when historic piano reissues on
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  LP were few and far between.
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  So I had reels and reels of tape of people like Alfred Courtauld and Ignaz Friedman,
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  Beno Moiseyevich, you name it, all the dead pianists.
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  And when I was on the phone with Bill when we were talking about Rachmaninoff, I couldn't
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  help but rant about my obsession and my growing tape collection.
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  And Bill happened to be aware of a lot of these pianists, and he said something like
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  he had some of these recordings as a child, I think.
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  Anyway, he was very open to my coming over to visit him in his apartment in Fort Lee,
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  New Jersey, where I could bring over some of these tapes.
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  But we never got around to setting up a date.
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  The idea was that he was going to be touring in Japan, I think, in the fall of 1980.
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  And then when he returned, I guess October, November, something like that, we'd get together.
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  But what I did not realize was that his health was markedly deteriorating.
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  And I didn't really notice this because Bill could put a very sober front up in public.
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  But I do remember when I went to see him play at the nightclub Fat Tuesday on September
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  9, 1980.
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  I remember he looked really awful.
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  His hair was long and shaggy.
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  He looked thinner than usual.
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  It looked like he hadn't slept in months.
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  And what I did not know is that he was compulsively doing cocaine, which hastened his demise.
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  He had a bleeding ulcer and he had double pneumonia, but the cocaine certainly wasn't
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  helping.
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  Still, he played fantastically, and he was even talking to the audience, which was something
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  I never had experienced with him in a club setting.
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  Usually when I heard him at the Vanguard, he would just play and we would just have
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  to guess what the songs were.
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  Anyway, I could not approach Bill that night at Fat Tuesday because basically his manager
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  Helen Keane was fending off fans.
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  And I sense she was doing that because Bill's health was much more fragile than the situation
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  appeared to be.
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  And he canceled the engagement after playing the following night, and then he died less
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  than a week later on September 15.
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  It's so funny that my memories of hearing and interacting with Bill Evans remained so
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  vivid all these years later.
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  I guess I didn't really go into the nuts and bolts of details in terms of what makes these
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  solo recordings and multi-tracked recordings so special.
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  But you do have the links to listen.
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  And at a certain point, I'll have to devote another episode to the evolution of Bill Evans'
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  various trios and go into much greater detail because I have a lot to say about this because
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  I've been living with his music for such a long time.
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  And he's a musician that everyone should really get to know.
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  I can tell you that just about every classical pianist I know reveres Bill Evans.
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  This is Jed Dissler, and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast
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  guide to piano recordings.
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  Thank you so much for being with me, and I look forward to us being together for the
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  next episode.