Borrowing heavily from the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, pianist Bill… Read Full Bio ↴Borrowing heavily from the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, pianist Bill Evans brought an introverted, relaxed, and lyrical classical sensibility into jazz. Along with his keen technical ability and nuanced sense of harmony, Evans worked to democratize the role of the bassist and drummer in his succession of piano trios, encouraging greater contrapuntal interplay. After gaining widespread attention as a member of Miles Davis' late-'50s group, Evans garnered further acclaim for his own work, leading a celebrated trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian and recording classic albums like 1960's Portrait in Jazz, 1961's At the Village Vanguard, and 1962's Waltz for Debby, the latter of which borrowed its title from the pianist's best-known composition. Following LaFaro's tragic death in 1961, Evans eventually forged a lasting creative partnership with bassist Eddie Gomez and continued to perform, working with drummers Jack DeJohnette and Marty Morell. He earned accolades including Grammy Awards for 1968's At the Montreux Jazz Festival, 1970's Alone, 1971's The Bill Evans Album, and 1979's We Will Meet Again. With the passage of time, Evans has become an entire school unto himself for pianists and a singular mood for listeners, leaving his mark on such noted players as Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, and Brad Mehldau.
Born and raised in New Jersey, Evans was recruited for Southeastern Louisiana University on a flute scholarship, where he received a thorough background in theory, played in the marching band, and also led his football team to a league championship as a quarterback. Graduating as a piano major in 1950, he started to tour with the Herbie Fields band, but the draft soon beckoned, and Evans was placed in the Fifth Army Band near Chicago. After three years in the service, he arrived in New York in 1954, playing in Tony Scott's quartet and undertaking postgraduate studies at Mannes College, where he encountered composer George Russell and his modal jazz theories. By 1956, he had already recorded his first album as a leader for Riverside, New Jazz Conceptions, still enthralled by the bop style of Bud Powell but also unveiling what was to become his best-known composition, "Waltz for Debby," which he wrote while still in the Army.
In spring 1958, Evans began an eight-month gig with the Miles Davis Sextet, where he exerted a powerful influence upon the willful yet ever-searching leader. Though Evans left the band that autumn, exhausted by pressured expectations and anxious to form his own group, he was deeply involved in the planning and execution of Davis' epochal Kind of Blue album in 1959, contributing ideas about mood, structure, and modal improvisation, and collaborating on several of the compositions. Although the original release gave composition credit of "Blue in Green" to Davis, Evans claimed he wrote it entirely, based on two chords suggested by Davis (nowadays, they receive co-credit).
Evans returned to the scene as a leader in December 1958 with the album Everybody Digs Bill Evans, which included the famous "Peace Piece," a haunting vamp for solo piano that sounds like a long-lost Satie Gymnopédie. Evans' first working trio turned out to be his most celebrated, combining forces with the astounding young bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian in three-way telepathic trialogues. With this group, Evans became a star -- and there was even talk about a recording with Davis involving the entire trio. Sadly, only ten days after a landmark live session at the Village Vanguard in June 1961, LaFaro was killed in an auto accident -- and the shattered Evans went into seclusion for almost a year. He re-emerged the following spring with Chuck Israels as his bassist, and he would go on to record duets with guitarist Jim Hall and a swinging quintet session, Interplay, with Hall and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard.
Upon signing with Verve in 1962, Evans was encouraged by producer Creed Taylor to continue to record in more varied formats: with Gary McFarland's big band, the full-orchestra arrangements of Claus Ogerman, co-star Stan Getz, and a reunion with Hall. The most remarkable of these experiments was Conversations with Myself, a session where Evans overdubbed second and third piano parts onto the first; this eventually led to two sequels in that fashion.
By 1966, Evans had paired with Puerto Rican bassist Eddie Gomez and formed a trio with drummer Jack DeJohnette. Though short-lived, the group garnered attention, picking up a Grammy Award for the 1968 concert album Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival. That same year, DeJohnette left to be replaced by Marty Morell. This version of Evans' trio continued to work for a decade, releasing albums like 1969's What's New and 1971's Grammy-winning The Bill Evans Album. Evans also picked up a Grammy in 1970 for his solo piano date Alone.
In his only concession to the emerging jazz-rock scene, Evans dabbled with the Rhodes electric piano in the 1970s but eventually tired of it, even though inventor Harold Rhodes had tailored the instrument to Evans' specifications. He recorded further trio sessions with Gomez and drummer Eliot Zigmund before launching a final trio in the late '70s with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe La Barbera. Often considered one of the pianist's best configurations since the LaFaro-Motian team, their brief time together was documented on 1979's Grammy-winning We Will Meet Again, also featuring trumpeter Tom Harrell and saxophonist Larry Schneider.
By the late '70s, Evans' health was rapidly deteriorating, aggravated by long periods of heroin and cocaine addiction. He died on September 15, 1980, at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He was 51 years old. Along with a 1994 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a flood of unreleased recordings from commercial and private sources helped to further elevate interest in Evans' work. Turn Out the Stars: The Final Village Vanguard Recordings arrived in 1996, followed by 2000's The Last Waltz, recorded at Keystone Korner in 1980. Resonance Records also released three archival albums featuring Evans' late-'60s trio: 2016's Some Other Time: The Lost Session from the Black Forest, 2018's Another Time: The Hilversum Concert, and 2020's Live at Ronnie Scott's.
Biography by Richard S. Ginell
There are other artists with the same name:
2.) Bill Evans (born 9th February 1958 in Clarendon Hills, Illinois, USA) is an American jazz saxophonist. His father was a classical piano prodigy and until junior high school Evans studied classical clarinet. Early in his studies he was able to hear such artists as Sonny Stitt and Stan Getz live at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago. He attended Hinsdale Central High School and studied with jazz tenor saxophonist Vince Micko.
He plays primarily tenor and soprano saxophones. Evans attended North Texas State University and William Paterson University, where he studied with Dave Liebman, who had played with Miles Davis. Moving to New York City in 1979 he spent countless hours in lofts playing jazz standards and perfecting his improvisational style. At the age of twenty-two he joined Miles Davis. In the early to mid-1980s, Evans played with Davis and was instrumental in his musical comeback. Notable albums recorded with Miles include The Man with the Horn, We Want Miles, and Decoy.
In addition to playing with Miles Davis he has played, toured and recorded with artists such as Herbie Hancock, John Mclaughlin (and his Mahavishnu Orchestra), Michael Franks, Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, Les McCann, Mark Egan, Danny Gottlieb, Ian Anderson, and Randy Brecker, among others. He is featured on the Petite Blonde album with Victor Bailey, Dennis Chambers, Mitch Forman, and Chuck Loeb.
Two of his most recent albums Soul Insider and Soulgrass were nominated for Grammy awards. Soulgrass was a groundbreaking bluegrass-jazz fusion concept involving such musicians as Béla Fleck, Sam Bush, Bruce Hornsby, and Vinnie Colaiuta. Although his latest projects are musically eclectic, his stylistic roots remain in the history of jazz saxophone, influenced by such players as Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Sonny Stitt, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley, Stan Getz, and Steve Grossman.
3.) San Francisco Bay Area musician and Virginia native Bill Evans has been involved with bluegrass music and the banjo for over twenty-five years as a player, teacher, writer, and historian. He occupies a unique niche in the banjo world: celebrated worldwide for his traditional and progressive bluegrass banjo styles as well as his innovative original compositions, he also enjoys a reputation as an outstanding instructor as well as being an expert player of nineteenth-century minstrel and classic/parlour banjo styles.
Born and raised in New Jersey, Evans was recruited for Southeastern Louisiana University on a flute scholarship, where he received a thorough background in theory, played in the marching band, and also led his football team to a league championship as a quarterback. Graduating as a piano major in 1950, he started to tour with the Herbie Fields band, but the draft soon beckoned, and Evans was placed in the Fifth Army Band near Chicago. After three years in the service, he arrived in New York in 1954, playing in Tony Scott's quartet and undertaking postgraduate studies at Mannes College, where he encountered composer George Russell and his modal jazz theories. By 1956, he had already recorded his first album as a leader for Riverside, New Jazz Conceptions, still enthralled by the bop style of Bud Powell but also unveiling what was to become his best-known composition, "Waltz for Debby," which he wrote while still in the Army.
In spring 1958, Evans began an eight-month gig with the Miles Davis Sextet, where he exerted a powerful influence upon the willful yet ever-searching leader. Though Evans left the band that autumn, exhausted by pressured expectations and anxious to form his own group, he was deeply involved in the planning and execution of Davis' epochal Kind of Blue album in 1959, contributing ideas about mood, structure, and modal improvisation, and collaborating on several of the compositions. Although the original release gave composition credit of "Blue in Green" to Davis, Evans claimed he wrote it entirely, based on two chords suggested by Davis (nowadays, they receive co-credit).
Evans returned to the scene as a leader in December 1958 with the album Everybody Digs Bill Evans, which included the famous "Peace Piece," a haunting vamp for solo piano that sounds like a long-lost Satie Gymnopédie. Evans' first working trio turned out to be his most celebrated, combining forces with the astounding young bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian in three-way telepathic trialogues. With this group, Evans became a star -- and there was even talk about a recording with Davis involving the entire trio. Sadly, only ten days after a landmark live session at the Village Vanguard in June 1961, LaFaro was killed in an auto accident -- and the shattered Evans went into seclusion for almost a year. He re-emerged the following spring with Chuck Israels as his bassist, and he would go on to record duets with guitarist Jim Hall and a swinging quintet session, Interplay, with Hall and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard.
Upon signing with Verve in 1962, Evans was encouraged by producer Creed Taylor to continue to record in more varied formats: with Gary McFarland's big band, the full-orchestra arrangements of Claus Ogerman, co-star Stan Getz, and a reunion with Hall. The most remarkable of these experiments was Conversations with Myself, a session where Evans overdubbed second and third piano parts onto the first; this eventually led to two sequels in that fashion.
By 1966, Evans had paired with Puerto Rican bassist Eddie Gomez and formed a trio with drummer Jack DeJohnette. Though short-lived, the group garnered attention, picking up a Grammy Award for the 1968 concert album Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival. That same year, DeJohnette left to be replaced by Marty Morell. This version of Evans' trio continued to work for a decade, releasing albums like 1969's What's New and 1971's Grammy-winning The Bill Evans Album. Evans also picked up a Grammy in 1970 for his solo piano date Alone.
In his only concession to the emerging jazz-rock scene, Evans dabbled with the Rhodes electric piano in the 1970s but eventually tired of it, even though inventor Harold Rhodes had tailored the instrument to Evans' specifications. He recorded further trio sessions with Gomez and drummer Eliot Zigmund before launching a final trio in the late '70s with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe La Barbera. Often considered one of the pianist's best configurations since the LaFaro-Motian team, their brief time together was documented on 1979's Grammy-winning We Will Meet Again, also featuring trumpeter Tom Harrell and saxophonist Larry Schneider.
By the late '70s, Evans' health was rapidly deteriorating, aggravated by long periods of heroin and cocaine addiction. He died on September 15, 1980, at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He was 51 years old. Along with a 1994 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a flood of unreleased recordings from commercial and private sources helped to further elevate interest in Evans' work. Turn Out the Stars: The Final Village Vanguard Recordings arrived in 1996, followed by 2000's The Last Waltz, recorded at Keystone Korner in 1980. Resonance Records also released three archival albums featuring Evans' late-'60s trio: 2016's Some Other Time: The Lost Session from the Black Forest, 2018's Another Time: The Hilversum Concert, and 2020's Live at Ronnie Scott's.
Biography by Richard S. Ginell
There are other artists with the same name:
2.) Bill Evans (born 9th February 1958 in Clarendon Hills, Illinois, USA) is an American jazz saxophonist. His father was a classical piano prodigy and until junior high school Evans studied classical clarinet. Early in his studies he was able to hear such artists as Sonny Stitt and Stan Getz live at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago. He attended Hinsdale Central High School and studied with jazz tenor saxophonist Vince Micko.
He plays primarily tenor and soprano saxophones. Evans attended North Texas State University and William Paterson University, where he studied with Dave Liebman, who had played with Miles Davis. Moving to New York City in 1979 he spent countless hours in lofts playing jazz standards and perfecting his improvisational style. At the age of twenty-two he joined Miles Davis. In the early to mid-1980s, Evans played with Davis and was instrumental in his musical comeback. Notable albums recorded with Miles include The Man with the Horn, We Want Miles, and Decoy.
In addition to playing with Miles Davis he has played, toured and recorded with artists such as Herbie Hancock, John Mclaughlin (and his Mahavishnu Orchestra), Michael Franks, Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, Les McCann, Mark Egan, Danny Gottlieb, Ian Anderson, and Randy Brecker, among others. He is featured on the Petite Blonde album with Victor Bailey, Dennis Chambers, Mitch Forman, and Chuck Loeb.
Two of his most recent albums Soul Insider and Soulgrass were nominated for Grammy awards. Soulgrass was a groundbreaking bluegrass-jazz fusion concept involving such musicians as Béla Fleck, Sam Bush, Bruce Hornsby, and Vinnie Colaiuta. Although his latest projects are musically eclectic, his stylistic roots remain in the history of jazz saxophone, influenced by such players as Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Sonny Stitt, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley, Stan Getz, and Steve Grossman.
3.) San Francisco Bay Area musician and Virginia native Bill Evans has been involved with bluegrass music and the banjo for over twenty-five years as a player, teacher, writer, and historian. He occupies a unique niche in the banjo world: celebrated worldwide for his traditional and progressive bluegrass banjo styles as well as his innovative original compositions, he also enjoys a reputation as an outstanding instructor as well as being an expert player of nineteenth-century minstrel and classic/parlour banjo styles.
Here's That Rainy Day
Bill Evans Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Maybe I should have saved those left over dreams
Funny, but here's that rainy day
Here's that rainy day they told me about
And I laughed at the thought that it might turn out this way
Where is that worn out wish that I threw aside
After it brought my lover near
It's funny how love becomes a cold rainy day
Funny, that rainy day is here
Funny how love becomes a cold rainy day
Funny, that rainy day is here
Funny, but here's that rainy day
Here's that rainy day they told me about
And I laughed at the thought that it might turn out this way
Where is that worn out wish that I threw aside
After it brought my lover near
It's funny how love becomes a cold rainy day
Funny how love becomes a cold rainy day
Funny, that rainy day is here
In "Here's That Rainy Day," Bill Evans describes a feeling of regret and sadness as he reflects on past decisions that may have led him to his present situation. He realizes that he may have made a mistake by not pursuing certain dreams or wishes in the past, and now he is facing a difficult time, symbolized by the "rainy day" of the song's title. Evans is expressing a common human experience - the realization that we cannot always control the outcomes of our choices and the often-cruel ways that life can surprise us.
The imagery of the "rainy day" is powerful throughout the song, as Evans draws a comparison between the unpredictability of life and the unpredictability of the weather. The metaphor of love as a "cold rainy day" adds another layer of meaning, suggesting that even the things that bring us joy and happiness can also bring us pain and difficulty.
Overall, "Here's That Rainy Day" is a poignant and emotional song that speaks to the struggles and challenges of everyday life. By examining his own experiences through the lens of this universal metaphor, Bill Evans is able to create a piece of music that resonates deeply with listeners.
Line by Line Meaning
Maybe I should have saved those left over dreams
Perhaps I should have held onto those unfulfilled aspirations
Funny, but here's that rainy day
Ironically, the day of disappointment has arrived
Here's that rainy day they told me about
This is the day of sadness that I was warned about
And I laughed at the thought that it might turn out this way
I found it amusing that things could go awry like this
Where is that worn out wish that I threw aside
What happened to that old desire that I discarded
After it brought my lover near
It is after that wish brought me true love
It's funny how love becomes a cold rainy day
It's ironic how the warmth and passion of love can turn into a bleak and dismal day
Funny, that rainy day is here
Ironically, the day of sadness has arrived
Lyrics © Kanjian Music, CONCORD MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC, Reservoir Media Management, Inc.
Written by: Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Burke
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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@dabear2438
Maybe I should have saved
Those leftover dreams.
Funny, but here's that rainy day.
Here's that rainy day they told me about,
And I laughed at the thought
That it might turn out this way.
Where is that worn out wish
That I threw aside
After it brought my love so near?
Funny, how love becomes a cold rainy day.
Funny, that rainy day is here.
It's funny how love becomes
A cold rainy day.
Funny, that rainy day is here.
🌬💨☔️🌧 💔
@tonietoney7743
One would think I'd big a big boy by now at nearly 82 - but this rendition brings the tears. Coincidentally, this is August 15, 2021, the day before his birthday, August 16, 1929. Oh how I wish he were still with us, healthy and strong, creating more masterful versions of great songs like this for us. From my point of view, he was the best ever at playing jazz piano while locked to it as though they were one.
@valerie_handani_pianist
Very well and beautifully stated!👍👍🎼🎶🎹 I am deeply touched.🙏🙏
@flylooper
The album he did with Tony Bennett, conservative in its progressions, I think is among the most beatiful pairings of voice, lyric, and piano that there has ever existed. "Another TIme" (From "On the Town") is absolute poetry.
@michaelfozzard4122
I was born in 1960 ,wish I had been born at the same time as you! Proper people, and great musical talent around
@plootyluvsturtle9843
Bill Evans is by far one of the greatest pianists of all time. He maybe doesn’t play the most virtuosic or technically demanding stuff but there’s no one who can play quite like him
@charliegold3227
Surely not better than Horowitz
@flylooper
That's a false comparison. Horowitz could never improvise like Evans could and Evans could never play the works of the great 19th and 20th century piano virtuosos. It's like comparing Picasso with DaVinci's "Last Supper."
@charliegold3227
@@flylooper I know, but neither bill evans nor Horowitz are „the best“ pianists of all time
@tomtommy3157
Bill Evens-one of he greatest piano players in any genre.
@francoriva55
A me fa venire in mente un periodo di follia... la ascoltavo sempre ..
Grande Evans