Indigenious Music
Hentoff, Nat
INDIGENOUS MUSIC , Nat Hentoff Bill Evans: A Totality of Sound Ifirst heard Bill Evans in 1956 when he was playing piano in Tony Scott's combo. A clarinetist, Tony invariably plays and speaks in...
...It took him a long time to get to the point at which he felt he was actually playing what he heard...
...But his piano playing was like someone singing...
...Miles got some hard talk for hiring a white boy, but since no one in the history of the music had been as outspoken as Miles about racism in and out of jazz, that hard talk just fell apart...
...That's practically unheard of in jazz recording history...
...In that decade, George Russell, the protean composer-leader—another quiet man of commanding force—put together an orchestra for a Brandeis University musical event...
...Joining them is a Russian emigre and elegant musician, Ksenia Su-darikova...
...I wouldn't care if a cat was green and had red breath— if he could play...
...You had to be beyond category...
...And he was particularly free with his time and spirit with young musicians looking for some kind of confirmation that music was indeed their true vocation...
...That's what happens when, as Bill once said of Miles Davis, you make "a kind of beauty that has never been heard before or since...
...But this time, Tony was eclipsed by this new pianist...
...Among them: Teddy Wilson, John Lewis, Jimmy Rowles, Chick Corea, Joanne Brackeen, George Shearing, and Herbie Hancock...
...For the rest of us, and particularly for musicians, he was sort of magical...
...But he treated her with such natural respect for who she was and who she wanted to become that she almost—but not quite— forgot that she was talking with a legend...
...The Art of the Balalaika/The Odessa Balalaikas (Nonesuch D-79034) may help remedy that area of our cultural deprivation...
...In those years, that was like Toscanini deciding to hire a singer...
...And the freshness of the colors, the subtlety of the dynamics—it was not quite like anything I'd heard before...
...All the years after, when Bill led trios throughout this country and a fair part of the world, he kept playing with even more authority—more wholly personal authority...
...For her, Bill Evans was so profound an influence that she was kind of in awe of him—a condition quite at odds with her customary skeptical temperament...
...One of the most luminous of all Bill Evans recordings is the recently released The Paris Concert (Elektra Musician 60164-1), recorded in 1979 with bassist Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera, who makes his drums sound as if they were singing...
...Later, Bill was hired by Miles Davis...
...Usually, he could no more help overshadowing his sidemen than a thunderstorm can help drowning out a whisper...
...On New Jazz Conceptions (Riverside OJC-025), Bill combines standards with his own originals, including the durable "Waltz for Debby...
...U Choice Cuts It is possible, I think, to learn more about the inner dynamics of Mozart's piano concertos from the recordings of Sir Clifford Curzon than from those of any other pianist...
...Many folks know the balalaika either as a wall-prop in a semi-fake Russian restaurant or as a supplier of background sounds in vintage MGM movies about Russia...
...And Palo Alto Records has released Bill Evans-A Tribute (PA 8028-2), a two-LP set of performances by fourteen pianists who admired Bill and were admired by him...
...He was always learning, editing himself, trying to hear more deeply...
...Younger readers will recognize the latter as Mary Hopkins's dreamy pop hit of the 1960s, "Those Were the Days...
...In the late 1970s, my younger daughter, for instance, was a music student who was also trying to get some gigs...
...In a club, for instance, hunched over so close to the piano that it looked as if he wanted to go all the way inside, Bill carved out his own space and time...
...I mean a totality of sound and feeling that, fragile as the mood often was, resisted any intrusions...
...Orrin Keepnews, who co-produced the session, points out in his notes that he had to persuade Evans that the young pianist was ready to record his first album under his own name...
...In a club, in a concert hall, in a recording studio, Bill always created his own microcosm...
...Bill died in 1980, but I hear musicians, from time to time, still speaking of him in the present tense...
...27, with Benjamin Britten conducting the English Chamber Orchestra (London CS 7251...
...It wasn't by force of personality...
...Evans, then and for the rest of his life, was exceedingly gentle and reticent...
...The Odessa Balalaikas are mostly Americans who have, however, steeped themselves in the art and lore of the instrument...
...For a long time, Curzon did not agree to release this performance, and then he wanted to delay it until he could also make a new recording that would reflect his current ideas on the music...
...Nearly all the time, it's the musician who keeps trying to convince the record company that he's more than ready...
...20 and No...
...We have had to wait thirteen years for one of his most deeply illuminated performances—the Mozart Piano Concertos No...
...A clarinetist, Tony invariably plays and speaks in italics...
...In addition to being an intriguingly diversified tribute, the set is also, in part, an account of the current state of jazz piano...
...The performances—soaring, lyrical, witty, passionate, sometimes mysterious-range from "Evenings Near Moscow" to "Down the Long Road...
...It was so joyous, so crackling with energy and bounding lyricism that everyone in the band was grinning...
...And Miles said, "If I had to worry about nonsense like that, I wouldn't have a band...
...But he was getting there, he would say on some days...
...Fantasy Records has reissued, on its Riverside subsidiary, the very first album Evans made as a leader, in 1956...
...Shy as he was, and he was very shy, he opened up to people who came to speak to him because of his music...
...In his late twenties, Evans was almost hypnotically compelling...
...Not that it couldn't be a lot better, he would insist...
...Long lines of graceful, dancing melodies...
...In my memory, it was rare for people to talk while he played—the coun-terforce of his intensity was too strong...
...Curzon died before he could record a new album, but what a wondrous legacy this performance is...
...and for the centerpiece of the day, he let Bill Evans loose in a solo that I can still hear...
...The musical scope of the instrument, though, is still largely unknown in this country...
Vol. 47 • August 1983 • No. 8
