I have perpetually been in love with the passionate, expressive playing of Bill Evans. I break down in tears when I hear his music. I slave over getting as close as I can to his feel, touch, harmonic and melodic conception when I play piano. "How my heart sings". When I reach heaven he'll be the first soul I wish to meet, and together we'll check up on JS Bach.
Hold on! In 1977 Bill had not as yet finalized the make-up of his 3rd piano trio. This hour-long session, which was originally part of a regular NPR series with host Marian McPartland interviewing a guest pianist in a studio with two grand pianos, became one of several i(including Brubeck, Peterson Mehldau) that was subsequently released on CD (I have two editions of the Evans interview, and the one shown above is the most recent). The interview was recorded on Nov. 6, 1978, which is important because Bill, after auditioning a succession of major players, had found the "right" replacement for Eddie Gomez in Marc Johnson. And his search for a replacement for Philly Joe Jones would meet with equal success when he found Joe LaBarbera. The stage was set for the Trio's last, far-reaching tour, amounting to an extended, powerful "Requiem" like none ever heard from a jazz musician. In this interview, Bill can barely contain his excitement as he explains and demonstrates, before an admiring, supportive audience in Marian, his new approach to rhythm and phrasing, about which he says: "I've been working hard on this." What we then hear on "The Touch of Your Lips" is more like a mighty "surge" than the infectious "swing" of Basie's or Oscar's playing, which takes its cue, above all, from the regular clap of the drummer's hi-hat on the off-beats. Bill's more flexible approach is especially evident when he exaggerates his insistent "lunging" into the next measure ahead of the chord's "scheduled" appearance in the harmonic progression. "Rhythm displacement" describes Bill's new approach in part (though it could also serve as a definition of "syncopation"). A more accurate term for Bill's innovative metrics might be "anticipatory phrasing," during which the pianist always seems to be ahead of the logic of metronomically-spaced chord changes. Rather than "lay back," or play "behind the beat" (practiced by the majority of musicians), Bill's is clearly working for the continual building of "tension" through anticipation. It was an experimental approach, requiring musicians proficient in the language of jazz conventions but also capable of adapting, even on the fly, a radical revisioning of rhythm and harmony for the sake expressing ideas, emotions and, above all, "beauty" on an order rarely heard in jazz. At the risk of a small detour, it must be said up front that the attribute setting Bill apart from most other jazz pianists was not his use of rhythm. It was, simply put, his TOUCH. Music--especially jazz--is the expression of emotions in a language that is neither verbal or visual. It's the "universal" language of the sounds, pitches and tones produced by vibrations of an "instrument." Compared to the human voice or a wind instrument, the piano would at first seem far too unwieldy a machine to serve as an artist's "personal voice." Yet numerous commentators have remarked not simply on the beauty of Bill's piano tone but on the complexity of the emotions it evokes. Miles Davis described Bill's touch as "llke the droplets a cool mountain stream at dawn." And if you listen to Bill playing runs that numerous other pianists have played, it's hard not to be impressed by the striking clarity of a run that's too distinctive in its parts to be written off as a mere "rush of activity." Under his thick and heavy but fast and dead-accurate fingers, each note is hit in the same place (smack dab in the middle) and with the same amount of force, or pressure, to produce a run that brings "high definition" to the experience of listening to jazz piano (a track illustrating this point can be found on Bill's early Riverside album, "Everybody Digs Bill Evans." The track is "Night and Day," and the passage I have in mind consists of the exchanges between Bill's piano and Philly Joe Jones' percussion kit. In this instance, it's the individual pitches in the pianist's rapid runs that draw our attention to the night-and-day clarity between each of the notes in the passage. A jazz pianist of some stature in the small jazz community once told me, "I would give my left nut to have Bill's fingers." He was referring to the total package--the shoulders, the positioning of his body (no contortions), the flexible wrists, the thick and heavy fingers--it all came together to enable Bill to execute, in an unforced manner, what other pianists knew was an exceptional gift. Even the leading pianists of our own time--Herbie, Chick, Keith (maybe Brad, too)--stood in line and wrote substantial checks to take a few lessons from Boston's Madame Chaloff (mother to bari saxophonist, Serge). Word had quickly spread that when it came to "touch," or extracting the full range of tones from the pianoforte, no one knew the problems and solutions (different from one player to another) than Mme. Chaloff. (Even she could not overcome what became known among jazz pianists as the "Van Gelder, or RVG, piano." In his determination to bring every instrument forward in the mix with equal clarity, RVG managed to "homogenize" the different tones from a host of different Blue Note pianists. The approach, at least in my experience of listening to hundreds of his recordings, hastens the onset of "listener's fatigue" as all of the tracks begin sounding the same, partly because the piano has lost some of its overtones (to prevent it from bleeding into another instrument's territory) and partly because the piano sounds as loud while accompanying as while soloing (admittedly to the delight of Horace Silver's many fans). Moreover, when the former optician (who would become the music's most renowned recording engineer thanks to his "trademark" sound for Blue Note and, to a lesser extent, Prestige) began offering his services to other receptive labels, like Verve and and Impulse, Blll Evans' piano sound was inevitably produced by RVG. Otherwise, the challenge to a pianist is like that confronting the greatest film directors ("auteurs" in French film theory). And the most noteworthy auteurs are able to commit to film their images and meanings with the same degree of control as a writer putting words and meanings on a sheet of paper. Such directors are said to place their art above all else, setting aside bureaucracy and machines, business and industry, in favor of bringing the director's personal feelings and meanings to the screen with "La Camera Stylo" (the camera pen). It's admittedly heady, elusive, idealistic language, but Bill frequently used it--and he meant it (even when he called Tony Bennett during a rough patch, insisting "Tony, think only of truth and beauty. That's all." As a musician, and moreover a piano player, Bill had NO illusions about the difficulty, even impossibility, of making a complicated mechanism like the pianoforte "sing" with a voice unlike that of all other pianists. But he did so, with a tone that could be sad and joyous, elegaic and comedic at the same time, and with tones that "breathe" with life, giving rise to thoughts and feelings requiring long moments to understand and digest. Most importantly to listeners of the interview, after demonstrating his approach via "The Touch of Your Lips," he invites Marian to join him (duets were a customary section of the show, which enjoyed a long run on NPR). Marian speaks immediately after joining Bill in the forceful flow, as if overwhelmed by the experience, feeling the meter going one direction against the undertow of an irresistible opposing current. Marian no doubt represents the listener's own response to a Bill Evans whose powerful Expressionism on this occasion stands in marked contrast to the subtle, nuanced, Impressionistic beauties of the early Trio with Scott LaFaro. We leave this interview impressed and informed, and above all with a new take on the Bill Evans we thought we knew from the conversations he provoked as a new arrival 1957-1963. No longer can we take him for granted, or see him as somewhat of an "acoustic dinosaur in the age of Herbie's and Chick's fusion bands and Keith's wildly successful "Koln Concert." At this late moment in his career, Bill has been reborn, manifesting his Russian ancestory (incl. the music of Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky and Rachmaninoff), and playing bolder than ever with a trio fully on board with the emphatic tensions in the music.
Agree about "his touch". It seemed as though he literally coaxed the sound out of the keys he struck. It is one of the things that separate him from all other jazz pianists.
In this interview, Evans mentions recording sessions with the late great Belgian harmonica virtuoso, Toots Thielemanns. These sessions with Toots Thielemanns were completed on Nov. 2, 1978 just 4 days before this famous PIANO JAZZ interview-performance with Marian McPartland. The sessions with Thielemanns took place between 0ctober 30-November 2, 1978 resulted in the album titled AFFINITY, recorded on the Warner Bros label and released in 1979. By this time, Bill Evans had just found a young and talented bassist named Marc Johnson. Johnson grew so much so rapidly while playing with Bill Evans and Joe LaBarbera between December 1978 until the overwhemingly devastating and untimely death of Evans at 51 in September 1980. Evans may have been gone physically for 40 years now, but to me anyway, musicians like Evans, NEVER EVER DIE. To quote Michel Legrand and the Bergmanns, long after you've gone, Bill "How do you keep the music playing? How do you make it last? How do you keep your recordings from fading too fast? The music...The MUSIC.... NEVER..NEVER NEVER ENDS!!!
This interview is a treasure… thank you for posting. He’s an astonishingly brilliant musician with an amazing singing piano tone, as well as being a very cool guy, and her solo in this show was just gorgeous, so imaginative and passionately played. That last Cole Porter tune was played with pure joy, and I listened with so much joy.
That performance of “Reflections In D” was sooo haunting! It brought tears to my eyes! It made me think back to my personal meeting with Bill-so many years ago (59 to be precise).I’m so happy that we have have this recording of Piano Jazz! Thanks for posting!
I'm a Bill Evans fan but my respect and admiration for Miriam McPartland is equal. Piano Jazz was one of the best productions on NPR and one of the reasons why NPR remains at the top.
Thank you sooooo much for uploading this. This gets my eyes teary. I always adored the show and admired Ms. McPartland. The two together in this gorgeous out of worldly music making is breathtaking and makes me nostalgic of those days listening to real jazz in NY
This would be the definition of a collector's item Both really incredible musicians with long histories, and so many students. Love the point she makes about Duke's minor tune writing, in order to channel more swing, and using it regularly to raise the level of the big band's music.
1.Waltz For Debby Bill Evans 0:00 2.All Of You Bill Evans 4:29 3.All Of You Bill Evans, Marian McPartland 7:06 4.In Your Own Sweet Way Bill Evans, Marian McPartland 12:00 5.talks about jazz playing Bill Evans 17:20 5.5 The Touch Of Your Lips Bill Evans 21:30 - 25:30 6.Reflection in D Bill Evans 30:30 7.The day of wines and roses Bill Evans,Marian McPartland 37:50 8.This is all i ask Bill Evans,Marian McPartland 43:40 9.While We're Young Marian McPartland 48:23 10.I love u Bill Evans,Marian McPartland
I hated the Van Gelder piano sound. The recordings Van Gelder did are harsh and metallic losing his delicate touch. Riverside and Bill Schwartau captured his delicate touch and sound!
One of the best programs on NPR ever. Mrs Mcpartland was always a big fan of all her guests. She was a big talent too.
Yes indeed. Marian McPartland with all of her successful history as a top pro gave all the respect and admiration to here guests all the time.
I have perpetually been in love with the passionate, expressive playing of Bill Evans. I break down in tears when I hear his music. I slave over getting as close as I can to his feel, touch, harmonic and melodic conception when I play piano. "How my heart sings". When I reach heaven he'll be the first soul I wish to meet, and together we'll check up on JS Bach.
😊♥️
The days when inner voices was a Beautiful thing!
Hold on! In 1977 Bill had not as yet finalized the make-up of his 3rd piano trio. This hour-long session, which was originally part of a regular NPR series with host Marian McPartland interviewing a guest pianist in a studio with two grand pianos, became one of several i(including Brubeck, Peterson Mehldau) that was subsequently released on CD (I have two editions of the Evans interview, and the one shown above is the most recent). The interview was recorded on Nov. 6, 1978, which is important because Bill, after auditioning a succession of major players, had found the "right" replacement for Eddie Gomez in Marc Johnson. And his search for a replacement for Philly Joe Jones would meet with equal success when he found Joe LaBarbera. The stage was set for the Trio's last, far-reaching tour, amounting to an extended, powerful "Requiem" like none ever heard from a jazz musician.
In this interview, Bill can barely contain his excitement as he explains and demonstrates, before an admiring, supportive audience in Marian, his new approach to rhythm and phrasing, about which he says: "I've been working hard on this." What we then hear on "The Touch of Your Lips" is more like a mighty "surge" than the infectious "swing" of Basie's or Oscar's playing, which takes its cue, above all, from the regular clap of the drummer's hi-hat on the off-beats. Bill's more flexible approach is especially evident when he exaggerates his insistent "lunging" into the next measure ahead of the chord's "scheduled" appearance in the harmonic progression. "Rhythm displacement" describes Bill's new approach in part (though it could also serve as a definition of "syncopation"). A more accurate term for Bill's innovative metrics might be "anticipatory phrasing," during which the pianist always seems to be ahead of the logic of metronomically-spaced chord changes. Rather than "lay back," or play "behind the beat" (practiced by the majority of musicians), Bill's is clearly working for the continual building of "tension" through anticipation. It was an experimental approach, requiring musicians proficient in the language of jazz conventions but also capable of adapting, even on the fly, a radical revisioning of rhythm and harmony for the sake expressing ideas, emotions and, above all, "beauty" on an order rarely heard in jazz.
At the risk of a small detour, it must be said up front that the attribute setting Bill apart from most other jazz pianists was not his use of rhythm. It was, simply put, his TOUCH. Music--especially jazz--is the expression of emotions in a language that is neither verbal or visual. It's the "universal" language of the sounds, pitches and tones produced by vibrations of an "instrument." Compared to the human voice or a wind instrument, the piano would at first seem far too unwieldy a machine to serve as an artist's "personal voice." Yet numerous commentators have remarked not simply on the beauty of Bill's piano tone but on the complexity of the emotions it evokes. Miles Davis described Bill's touch as "llke the droplets a cool mountain stream at dawn." And if you listen to Bill playing runs that numerous other pianists have played, it's hard not to be impressed by the striking clarity of a run that's too distinctive in its parts to be written off as a mere "rush of activity." Under his thick and heavy but fast and dead-accurate fingers, each note is hit in the same place (smack dab in the middle) and with the same amount of force, or pressure, to produce a run that brings "high definition" to the experience of listening to jazz piano (a track illustrating this point can be found on Bill's early Riverside album, "Everybody Digs Bill Evans." The track is "Night and Day," and the passage I have in mind consists of the exchanges between Bill's piano and Philly Joe Jones' percussion kit. In this instance, it's the individual pitches in the pianist's rapid runs that draw our attention to the night-and-day clarity between each of the notes in the passage.
A jazz pianist of some stature in the small jazz community once told me, "I would give my left nut to have Bill's fingers." He was referring to the total package--the shoulders, the positioning of his body (no contortions), the flexible wrists, the thick and heavy fingers--it all came together to enable Bill to execute, in an unforced manner, what other pianists knew was an exceptional gift. Even the leading pianists of our own time--Herbie, Chick, Keith (maybe Brad, too)--stood in line and wrote substantial checks to take a few lessons from Boston's Madame Chaloff (mother to bari saxophonist, Serge). Word had quickly spread that when it came to "touch," or extracting the full range of tones from the pianoforte, no one knew the problems and solutions (different from one player to another) than Mme. Chaloff. (Even she could not overcome what became known among jazz pianists as the "Van Gelder, or RVG, piano." In his determination to bring every instrument forward in the mix with equal clarity, RVG managed to "homogenize" the different tones from a host of different Blue Note pianists. The approach, at least in my experience of listening to hundreds of his recordings, hastens the onset of "listener's fatigue" as all of the tracks begin sounding the same, partly because the piano has lost some of its overtones (to prevent it from bleeding into another instrument's territory) and partly because the piano sounds as loud while accompanying as while soloing (admittedly to the delight of Horace Silver's many fans). Moreover, when the former optician (who would become the music's most renowned recording engineer thanks to his "trademark" sound for Blue Note and, to a lesser extent, Prestige) began offering his services to other receptive labels, like Verve and and Impulse, Blll Evans' piano sound was inevitably produced by RVG.
Otherwise, the challenge to a pianist is like that confronting the greatest film directors ("auteurs" in French film theory). And the most noteworthy auteurs are able to commit to film their images and meanings with the same degree of control as a writer putting words and meanings on a sheet of paper. Such directors are said to place their art above all else, setting aside bureaucracy and machines, business and industry, in favor of bringing the director's personal feelings and meanings to the screen with "La Camera Stylo" (the camera pen). It's admittedly heady, elusive, idealistic language, but Bill frequently used it--and he meant it (even when he called Tony Bennett during a rough patch, insisting "Tony, think only of truth and beauty. That's all." As a musician, and moreover a piano player, Bill had NO illusions about the difficulty, even impossibility, of making a complicated mechanism like the pianoforte "sing" with a voice unlike that of all other pianists. But he did so, with a tone that could be sad and joyous, elegaic and comedic at the same time, and with tones that "breathe" with life, giving rise to thoughts and feelings requiring long moments to understand and digest.
Most importantly to listeners of the interview, after demonstrating his approach via "The Touch of Your Lips," he invites Marian to join him (duets were a customary section of the show, which enjoyed a long run on NPR). Marian speaks immediately after joining Bill in the forceful flow, as if overwhelmed by the experience, feeling the meter going one direction against the undertow of an irresistible opposing current. Marian no doubt represents the listener's own response to a Bill Evans whose powerful Expressionism on this occasion stands in marked contrast to the subtle, nuanced, Impressionistic beauties of the early Trio with Scott LaFaro. We leave this interview impressed and informed, and above all with a new take on the Bill Evans we thought we knew from the conversations he provoked as a new arrival 1957-1963. No longer can we take him for granted, or see him as somewhat of an "acoustic dinosaur in the age of Herbie's and Chick's fusion bands and Keith's wildly successful "Koln Concert." At this late moment in his career, Bill has been reborn, manifesting his Russian ancestory (incl. the music of Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky and Rachmaninoff), and playing bolder than ever with a trio fully on board with the emphatic tensions in the music.
Agree about "his touch". It seemed as though he literally coaxed the sound out of the keys he struck. It is one of the things that separate him from all other jazz pianists.
"I would give my left nut..."
LoL!! 😀😁😂!!!
Beautifully written!
In this interview, Evans mentions recording sessions with the late great Belgian harmonica virtuoso, Toots Thielemanns. These sessions with Toots Thielemanns were completed on Nov. 2, 1978 just 4 days before this famous PIANO JAZZ interview-performance with Marian
McPartland.
The sessions with Thielemanns took place between 0ctober 30-November 2, 1978 resulted in the album titled AFFINITY, recorded on the Warner Bros label and released in 1979.
By this time, Bill Evans had just found a young and talented bassist named Marc Johnson. Johnson grew so much so rapidly while playing with Bill Evans and Joe LaBarbera between December 1978 until the overwhemingly devastating and untimely death of Evans at 51 in September 1980. Evans may have been gone physically for 40 years now, but to me anyway, musicians like Evans, NEVER EVER DIE. To quote Michel Legrand and the Bergmanns, long after you've gone, Bill "How do you keep the music playing? How do you make it last? How do you keep your recordings from fading too fast? The music...The MUSIC.... NEVER..NEVER NEVER ENDS!!!
yeah ok, but he wasn't russian, he was partly of rusyn descent.
Beatuful music. Bill Evans is my favorite jazz pianist.
This interview is a treasure… thank you for posting. He’s an astonishingly brilliant musician with an amazing singing piano tone, as well as being a very cool guy, and her solo in this show was just gorgeous, so imaginative and passionately played. That last Cole Porter tune was played with pure joy, and I listened with so much joy.
I love McPartland. She is so relaxed when she interprets a piece. I always listened to her jazz piano broadcasts here in SF on KCSM.
Sensational radio from two giants of the jazz piano community
Beautiful moment in time captured right here! Amongst everything happening in the world in that hour, before I was even born, I am closer to God
I have literally but an hour and a half ago heard of McPartland's Piano Jazz show and this one with Evans is my first. What a great great great find.
Outstanding. We can all be thankful.
Really Yes !
Can't beat this pair! Not only the playing but the interview, so informative.
Best waltz Debby I ever heard
That performance of “Reflections In D” was sooo haunting! It brought tears to my eyes! It made me think back to my personal meeting with Bill-so many years ago (59 to be precise).I’m so happy that we have have this recording of Piano Jazz! Thanks for posting!
I'm a Bill Evans fan but my respect and admiration for Miriam McPartland is equal. Piano Jazz was one of the best productions on NPR and one of the reasons why NPR remains at the top.
Beautiful version of Brubeck'a "In Your Own Sweet Way."
Evergreen performance!
Simply Devine.
Thank you sooooo much for uploading this. This gets my eyes teary. I always adored the show and admired Ms. McPartland. The two together in this gorgeous out of worldly music making is breathtaking and makes me nostalgic of those days listening to real jazz in NY
It makes me tear up too, I can hear Scott LaFaro's soul in Evan's left hand.
This is just great!
I am a simple man, there are some days that I just need to come and appreciate some of Bill Evans's works of art.
This would be the definition of a collector's item Both really incredible musicians with long histories, and so many students. Love the point she makes about Duke's minor tune writing, in order to channel more swing, and using it regularly to raise the level of the big band's music.
So fascinating programme！
What a heaven!
Like Evans, McPartland went up a key or two. She probably was an influence on him.
1.Waltz For Debby Bill Evans 0:00
2.All Of You Bill Evans 4:29
3.All Of You Bill Evans, Marian McPartland 7:06
4.In Your Own Sweet Way Bill Evans, Marian McPartland 12:00
5.talks about jazz playing Bill Evans 17:20
5.5 The Touch Of Your Lips Bill Evans 21:30 - 25:30
6.Reflection in D Bill Evans 30:30
7.The day of wines and roses Bill Evans,Marian McPartland 37:50
8.This is all i ask Bill Evans,Marian McPartland 43:40
9.While We're Young Marian McPartland 48:23
10.I love u Bill Evans,Marian McPartland
Thank you!
5.5 The Touch Of Your Lips Bill Evans 21:30 - 25:30
15 09 2016
25:06 smooth movements
Marian McPartland, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans...the genius of these players really really boggles my mind. I mean, how on earth?
21:07
4:25
Which Cole Porter is the last number they did?
It's called "I Love You".
November ,6 1978 Release date, but was done in 1977 ?
This was almost as good as the episode she did with The Spice Girls.
I hear echoes of Erik Satie. He is of the impressionism school.
...and Ravel.
I hated the Van Gelder piano sound. The recordings Van Gelder did are harsh and metallic losing his delicate touch. Riverside and Bill Schwartau captured his delicate touch and sound!