“The Compositional Genius of Bill Evans — A Brief Overview & Playlist,” by Bob Hecht

January 13th, 2022

.

.

photo by Steve Schapiro, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Bill Evans (1961 publicity photo by Steve Schapiro)

Publicity photo of American jazz pianist Bill Evans in 1961. Photographed by Steve Schapiro for Riverside Records

.

.

___

.

.

 

The Compositional Genius of Bill Evans

 —A Brief Overview & Playlist—

 

by Bob Hecht

.

…..When Riverside Records released Bill Evans’ second album as a leader in 1959, they titled it—unknown to Evans in advance—Everybody Digs Bill Evans, and filled the cover with laudatory quotations from several high-ranking jazz artists, including Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley and George Shearing. Evans was reportedly upset by it, and cracked, “Why didn’t you get a quote from my mother?!”

…..I have been a fan of Evans’ unique approach to playing jazz piano from the time of that release, and while it may be true that not everybody digs Bill Evans, I have seen over the years that for those jazz fans who do dig him, they really dig him, dig him very deeply, and feel a profound emotional/spiritual connection with his music. Most of that is the result, I believe, of his extremely personal, vulnerable, lyrical style. The man was a poet of the piano.

…..The contours of his career, personal life and ultimate self-destruction have been well documented, and he is rightly respected, and revered, as a giant of the piano.

…..However, in addition to being the marvelous pianist he was, he was also a remarkable composer. And while much has been written about his playing, there has been, I believe, insufficient focus on his compositions and his composing style. This is in spite of his having written some fifty tunes, many of which have been recorded by other jazz musicians and have become jazz standards. (“Waltz for Debby” is of course one of the best-known.) True, Evans was not a prolific composer, and did not reportedly think of himself as a dedicated, full-time composer—rather he considered himself a jazz player who sometimes composed. Yet his compositions are among the most original in jazz, marked by sensitive, beautiful melodies with rich harmonies owing no small debt to his appreciation of classical composers such as Bach, Chopin, Scriabin, Ravel and Debussy.

…..As Jack Reilly, the noted pianist, composer and Evans scholar has observed, “Besides his amazing playing, Bill Evans’ compositional legacy is set for centuries. Like all the masters, Wagner, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, et al, his music is timeless.”

…..Evans did study composition, and took very seriously his own efforts in that arena. He once told Brian Priestly in an interview, “I’ve always had a compositional ambition and desire. So I would like to get busier writing.” He was known for giving new life to old or overlooked standards by the composers of the “Great American Songbook,” and he looked to them for inspiration in his own composing. “I read somewhere,” Evans once said, “that Gershwin had to write twelve bad tunes to get a good one. That gives me confidence.”

…..Pianist Warren Bernhardt, Evans’ pupil and friend, observed first-hand the seriousness of Bill’s approach to composing. As noted in Peter Pettinger’s indispensable biography, Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, he consulted Bernhardt while writing a new composition dedicated to his son. “He would play it over and over in various keys and ask my opinion,” Bernhardt recalled. “Then he’d ask me to play it and transpose it and see what I thought. He really loved hearing these tunes of his over and over again.”

…..Pianist and educator Harold Danko has noted about Evans’ compositional output, “Nowhere can we learn more about the musical language of Bill Evans than from his own compositions.”

…..But composition for Evans was a means to an end—and that end was improvisation. His tunes, however rich and beautiful in and of themselves, were created to be springboards for “spontaneous composition,” the essence of jazz. He often referred to jazz as the art of playing “a minute’s worth of music in a minute!”

…..One particularly fascinating aspect of Evans’ compositions is how many of them had strong personal associations and dedications. For example, “Waltz for Debby” was written for his young niece, the daughter of his older brother Harry, with whom he was very close. “We Will Meet Again” was a tribute to his brother following Harry’s suicide; both “Song For Helen” and “One For Helen” were dedicated to his longtime manager Helen Keane, and “Peri’s Scope” was named in honor of a girlfriend, Peri Cousins.  In his biography of Evans, Pettinger notes that when Cousins learned that Evans had recorded the tune named for her, she said, “It was a great feeling. I felt immortal.”

…..Evans loved anagrams and created several extremely clever ones as titles to tunes dedicated to important people in his life. His extraordinary composition “Re: Person I Knew” was an anagram for the name of his Riverside Records producer, Orrin Keepnews; the brooding, emotionally-searing “N.Y.C’s No Lark” was dedicated to fellow pianist, friend and heroin addict Sonny Clark, following his death from an overdose; and “Yet Ne’er Broken” was written and named for his cocaine supplier Robert Kenney.

…..Other significant people in Evans’ life he honored in his compositions included  girlfriend Ellaine Schultz, for whom he first wrote “There Came You.” About that tune, Bernhardt said, “This song is actually about that first moment he laid eyes on her; they fell immediately in love.” Tragically, Ellaine later committed suicide by throwing herself in the path of a New York subway train. Evans subsequently wrote “B Minor Waltz” in her memory.

…..In addition, among others, he composed “For Nenette” (aka “In April”) for his wife Nenette Zazarra, whom he married in 1973. Evans said about this tune that, “There was a danger of the melody being too sweet, and so I worked on this with a great deal of control and thought. The result, I hope, is a delicate balance of romanticism and discipline.”

…..“Maxine” was composed for his stepdaughter. “She’s happy, full of life,” Evans said. “The song has that spirit.” “Letter To Evan” was composed for his then four-year-old son Evan, born in 1975; and “Laurie” was created for his last girlfriend, Laurie Verchomin.

…..Bassist Chuck Israels, who played with Evans for several years in the 1960’s, observed in a 2014 All About Jazz interview, “Evans’ compositions are each constructed around one main idea. ‘Re: Person I Knew’ is built on a pedal point; ‘Walkin’ Up,’ on major chords and disjunct melodic motion; ‘Blue in Green,’ on doubling and redoubling of the tempo; and ‘Time Remembered,’ on melodic connection of seemingly unrelated harmonic areas.” Further, Israels noted that each of his compositions, “is so committed to a central idea that a program of Evans’ music is foolproof in its variety from composition to composition.”

…..Jack Reilly expressed the opinion that “Time Remembered” was Evans’ crowning compositional achievement, “because there are no active (dominant) harmonies in the progression. A miracle of major proportions! No one has achieved this, no one; no other composer from the 1600’s up to the 1980’s. That’s magic!”

…..Evans loved waltzes, and in addition to recording several by composer Earl Zindars (who wrote “How My Heart Sings”), he composed numerous 3/4 tunes himself, including “Very Early,” about which Pettinger wrote: “It exemplifies a fundamental lifelong characteristic—the application of logic to a creative musical process. It is a highly disciplined piece of writing.” And for his tune “34 Skidoo,” as Pettinger notes, “he also adopted Zindars’s idea of changing the time signature from three-time to four-time on the bridge.”

…..Most of Evans’ compositions were built on original structural harmony, rather than being based on existing chord changes of standards. A notable exception was “Five,” based on “I Got Rhythm.” But even then, Bill took creative license. As Pettinger notes, “The clever tune takes on the nature of an arithmetical puzzle. It is in four-time, but quintuplets occupy each of the first sixteen bars. It was, in short, as Bernhardt notes, “a bitch to play.”

…..According to Pettinger, Evans always carried with him a small composer’s notebook for writing down ideas. “A new tune was as likely to well up inside his imagination and be set down on a New York subway as it was at a piano.” Evans said that his “Show-Type Tune” was a case in point. “Songs usually required a lot of work later at the piano but this one came out nearly complete.”

…..And then there was “Peace Piece.” One of Evans most unique and personal ‘compositions,’ this ruminative solo exploration was largely improvised in the studio, based on an ostinato figure he drew from the Bernstein classic, “Some Other Time.” (Some also believe it had a likely precursor in a Chopin piece.) Evans said of it, “Except for the bass figure, it was a complete improvisation. It’s completely free-form.” He never played it in public again.

…..Evans’ association with Miles Davis in the late fifties was an artistic high point for Evans, and one that gave him high visibility in the jazz world, particularly his involvement in the classic Kind of Blue recording. While Davis, infamous for stealing composer credits on tunes by others, claimed authorship of “Blue in Green,” it was in fact Evans’ creation. He explained, as Pettinger writes: “One day at Miles’ apartment, he wrote on some manuscript paper the symbols for G-minor and A-augmented. And he said, ‘What would you do with that?’ I didn’t really know, but I went home and wrote ‘Blue in Green.’” Similarly, Evans should have been credited as co-composer on “Flamenco Sketches” from that album, as it was built on the same pattern as his “Peace Piece.”

…..The reflective “Turn Out the Stars” remains one of his loveliest compositions and, as Pettinger notes, “was to endure and become arguably Evans’ second-greatest classic after “Waltz for Debby.”

…..His gentle ballad, “Sugar Plum” had a fascinating genesis. During the Evans-Jim Hall collaboration Intermodulation, on the tune “Angel Face,” Bill plays a sublimely lyrical phrase, which later caught the ear of songwriter John Court. Court “became obsessed” with this fragment, as Pettinger writes, “and created a lyric to accommodate several repetitions of the theme, thus delivery the pianist of a ‘freebie’ original. Evans was delighted.”

…..Two of his compositions were “finished” posthumously by pianist-singer Eliane Elias. “Here Is Something for You” was discovered on a cassette of Evans playing the new tune for bassist Marc Johnson shortly before Bill’s death in 1980. (Johnson was later to become Elias’ husband.) Elias wrote the lyrics to the tune. And “Evanesque” was developed from fragments of an unfinished Evans piece she discovered.

…..Over the decades, Evans’ compositions have captivated and challenged so many other jazz musicians. Pianist Bill Charlap, for example, said in a 2012 JazzWax interview: “Bill’s music was incredibly challenging and technical. As a composer, Bill was such a strong ‘architect’ that his ‘buildings’ never fall.”

…..To highlight his enduring compositional genius, I’ve assembled a Spotify playlist of almost all of his tunes. In most instances, it includes a couple of versions of each tune by Evans and the many others who have covered, and continue to cover, this unique repertoire. Consider it a kind of ‘endless loop’ tribute, honoring one of jazz’s finest composers.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Bob Hecht frequently contributes his essays, photographs, interviews, playlists and personal stories to  Jerry Jazz Musician.  He has a long history of producing and hosting jazz radio programs; his former podcast series, The Joys of Jazz, was the 2019 Silver Medal winner in the New York Festivals Radio Awards.

.

.

The photographer Brian McMillen has been documenting the jazz scene since the mid-1970’s.  To view his work, visit his website by clicking here.

.

.

___

.

.

Click here to learn how to submit your work

.

.

.

 

.

.

.

.

Share this:

One comments on ““The Compositional Genius of Bill Evans — A Brief Overview & Playlist,” by Bob Hecht”

Comment on this article:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Site Archive

Your Support is Appreciated

Jerry Jazz Musician has been commercial-free since its inception in 1999. Your generous donation helps it remain that way. Thanks very much for your kind consideration.

Publisher’s Notes

Creatives – “This is our time!“…A Letter from the Publisher...A call to action to take on political turmoil through the use of our creativity as a way to help our fellow citizens “pierce the mundane to find the marvelous.”

In This Issue

Announcing the book publication of Kinds of Cool: An Interactive Collection of Jazz Poetry...The first Jerry Jazz Musician poetry anthology published in book form includes 90 poems by 47 poets from all over the world, and features the brilliant artwork of Marsha Hammel and a foreword by Jack Kerouac’s musical collaborator David Amram. The collection is “interactive” (and quite unique) because it invites readers – through the use of QR codes printed on many of the book’s pages – to link to selected readings by the poets themselves, as well as to historic audio and video recordings (via YouTube) relevant to many of the poems, offering a holistic experience with the culture of jazz.

Interview

photo Louis Armstrong House Museum
Interview with Ricky Riccardi, author of Stomp Off, Let’s Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong...The author discusses the third volume of his trilogy, which includes the formation of the Armstrong-led ensembles known as the Hot Five and Hot Seven that modernized music, the way artists play it, and how audiences interact with it and respond to it.

The Sunday Poem


“The Köln Concert,” by Martin Agee


The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work....

Martin Agee reads his poem at its conclusion


Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem

Feature

“What one song best represents your expectations for 2025?” Readers respond...When asked to name the song that best represents their expectations for 2025, respondents often cited songs of protest and of the civil rights era, but so were songs of optimism and appreciation, including Bob Thiele and George David Weiss’ composition “What a Wonderful World,” made famous by Louis Armstrong, who first performed it live in 1959. The result is a fascinating and extensive outlook on the upcoming year.

Poetry

Sax in a Blue Suit by Samuel Dixon
21 jazz poems on the 21st of March, 2025...An ongoing series designed to share the quality of jazz poetry continuously submitted to Jerry Jazz Musician by poets sharing their relationship to the music, and with the musicians who perform it.

Interview

photo by Brian McMillen
Interview with Phillip Freeman, author of In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor...The author discusses Cecil Taylor – the most eminent free jazz musician of his era, whose music marked the farthest boundary of avant-garde jazz.

Feature

photo of Rudy Van Gelder via Blue Note Records
“Rudy Van Gelder: Jazz Music’s Recording Angel” – by Joel Lewis...For over 60 years, the legendary recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder devoted himself to the language of sound. And although he recorded everything from glee clubs to classical music, he was best known for recording jazz – specifically the musicians associated with Blue Note and Prestige records. Joel Lewis writes about his impact on the sound of jazz, and what has become of his Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey studio.

Poetry

photo of Charlie Parker by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress; Design by Rhonda R. Dorsett
Jerrice J. Baptiste’s 2025 Jazz Poetry Calendar...Jerrice J. Baptiste’s 12-month 2025 calendar of jazz poetry winds through the upcoming year with her poetic grace while inviting us to wander through music by the likes of Hoagy Carmichael, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sarah Vaughan, Melody Gardot and Charlie Parker.

Playlist

“Sextets: The Joy of Six” – a playlist by Bob Hecht...The cover of the 1960 debut album by the Jazztet, co-founded by the trumpeter Art Farmer and the tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, and which always featured a trombonist and a piano-bass-drums rhythm section. Golson wrote much of the music, but “Hi-Fly” – a tune featured on Bob Hecht’s two-hour playlist devoted to sextets – was written by pianist Randy Weston, and appears on the 1960 album Big City Sounds.

Interview

Interview with Jonathon Grasse: author of Jazz Revolutionary: The Life and Music of Eric Dolphy....The multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy was a pioneer of avant-garde technique. His life cut short in 1964 at the age of 36, his brilliant career touched fellow musical artists, critics, and fans through his innovative work as a composer, sideman and bandleader. Jonathon Grasse’s Jazz Revolutionary is a significant exploration of Dolphy’s historic recorded works, and reminds readers of the complexity of his biography along the way. Grasse discusses his book in a December, 2024 interview.

Feature

Dmitry Rozhkov, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
“Thoughts on Matthew Shipp’s Improvisational Style” – an essay by Jim Feast..Short of all the musicians being mind readers, what accounts for free jazz musicians’ – in this instance those playing with the pianist Matthew Shipp – incredible ability for mutual attunement as they play?

Art

Photo of Joe Lovano by Giovanni Piesco
The Photographs of Giovanni Piesco: Joe Lovano...Beginning in 1990, the noted photographer Giovanni Piesco began taking backstage photographs of many of the great musicians who played in Amsterdam’s Bimhuis, that city’s main jazz venue which is considered one of the finest in the world. Jerry Jazz Musician will occasionally publish portraits of jazz musicians that Giovanni has taken over the years. This edition features 1999 photographs of the saxophonist Joe Lovano.

Feature

Excerpts from David Rife’s Jazz Fiction: Take Two – Vol. 11: “Chick” and “Hen” Lit...A substantial number of novels and stories with jazz music as a component of the story have been published over the years, and the scholar David J. Rife has written short essay/reviews of them. In this 11th edition, Rife writes about the “chicks” (energetic women, attractive, and open to experience) and “hens” (older women who have either buried or lost a loved one, and who seem content with their lives) who are at the center of stories with jazz within its theme.

Interview

photo by Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress
A Black History Month Profile: The legendary author Richard Wright...In a 2002 Jerry Jazz Musician interview, Richard Wright biographer Hazel Rowley discusses the life and times of legendary author Richard Wright, whose work included the novels Native Son andBlack Boy

Feature

On the Turntable — The “Best Of the ‘Best Of’” in 2024 jazz recordings...Our annual year-end compilation of jazz albums oft mentioned by a wide range of critics as being the best of 2024

In Memoriam

photo via Pexels.com
“Departures to the Final Arms Hotel in 2024” – poetic tributes, by Terrance Underwood...2024 produced its share of losses of legendary jazz musicians. Terrance Underwood pays poetic homage to a handful who have touched his life, imagining their admittance to the Final Arms Hotel, a destination he introduces in his prelude.

Community

Stewart Butterfield, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Community Bookshelf #4...“Community Bookshelf” is a twice-yearly space where writers who have been published on Jerry Jazz Musician can share news about their recently authored books and/or recordings. This edition includes information about books published within the last six months or so (September, 2024 – March, 2025)

Feature

Trading Fours, with Douglas Cole, No. 23: “The Wave”...In this edition of an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film, Douglas’ poem is written partly as a reference to the Antonio Carlos Jobin song “Wave,” but mostly to get in the famed Japanese artist Hokusai’s idea of the wave as being a huge, threatening thing. (The poem initially sprang from listening to Cal Tjader’s “Along Came Mary”).

Short Fiction

Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons/blur effect added
Short Fiction Contest-winning story #67 — “Bluesette,” by Salvatore Difalco...The author’s award-winning story is a semi-satirical mood piece about a heartbroken man in Europe listening to a recording by the harmonica player Toots Thielemans while under the influence of a mind-altering substance.

Interview

Interview with James Kaplan, author of 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the Lost Empire of Cool...The esteemed writer tells a vibrant story about the jazz world before, during, and after the 1959 recording of Kind of Blue, and how the album’s three genius musicians came together, played together, and grew together (and often apart) throughout the experience.

Feature

photo of Lester Young by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
Jazz History Quiz #179...Throughout his career, this saxophonist was known as the “Vice Prez” because he sounded so similar to “Prez,” Lester Young (pictured). Who was he?

Community

Nominations for the Pushcart Prize XLIX...Announcing the six writers nominated for the Pushcart Prize v. XLIX, whose work was published in Jerry Jazz Musician during 2024.

Publisher’s Notes

photo by Rhonda Dorsett
On turning 70, and contemplating the future of Jerry Jazz Musician...

Feature

“Are Jazz-Hop Instrumentals Jazz?” – an observation (and playlist) by Anthony David Vernon...Google “what is jazz-hop?” and the AI overview describes it is “a subgenre of hip-hop that combines jazz and hip-hop music. It developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.” In Mr. Vernon’s observation, he makes the case that it is also a subgenre of jazz.

Community

Notes on Bob Hecht’s book, Stolen Moments: A Photographer’s Personal Journey...Some thoughts on a new book of photography by frequent Jerry Jazz Musician contributing writer Bob Hecht

Art

“The Jazz Dive” – the art of Allen Mezquida...The artist's work is inspired by the counterculture music from the 1950s and 60s, resulting in art “that resonates with both eyes and ears.” It is unique and creative and worth a look…

True Jazz Stories

Columbia Records; via Wikimedia Commons
“An Evening with Michael Bloomfield” – a true blues story by David Eugene Everard...The author recounts his experience meeting and interviewing the great blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield in 1974…

Short Fiction

photo via PxHere
“The Magic” – a story by Mark Bruce...Most bands know how to make music. They learn to play together so that it sounds good and maybe even get some gigs. Most bands know that you have your chord progressions and your 4/4 beat and your verses and bridges. Some bands even have a guy (or a woman, like Chrissy Hynde) who writes songs. So what gives some bands the leg up into the Top 40?

Contributing Writers

Click the image to view the writers, poets and artists whose work has been published on Jerry Jazz Musician, and find links to their work

Coming Soon

An interview with Sascha Feinstein, author of Writing Jazz: Conversations with Critics and Biographers;, Also, a new Jazz History Quiz, and lots of short fiction; poetry; photography; interviews; playlists; and much more in the works...

Interview Archive

Ella Fitzgerald/IISG, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Click to view the complete 25-year archive of Jerry Jazz Musician interviews, including those recently published with Judith Tick on Ella Fitzgerald (pictured),; Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz on the Girl Groups of the 60's; Tad Richards on Small Group Swing; Stephanie Stein Crease on Chick Webb; Brent Hayes Edwards on Henry Threadgill; Richard Koloda on Albert Ayler; Glenn Mott on Stanley Crouch; Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom on Eubie Blake; Richard Brent Turner on jazz and Islam; Alyn Shipton on the art of jazz; Shawn Levy on the original queens of standup comedy; Travis Atria on the expatriate trumpeter Arthur Briggs; Kitt Shapiro on her life with her mother, Eartha Kitt; Will Friedwald on Nat King Cole; Wayne Enstice on the drummer Dottie Dodgion; the drummer Joe La Barbera on Bill Evans; Philip Clark on Dave Brubeck; Nicholas Buccola on James Baldwin and William F. Buckley; Ricky Riccardi on Louis Armstrong; Dan Morgenstern and Christian Sands on Erroll Garner; Maria Golia on Ornette Coleman.