A true giant in the annals of modern jazz, Gil Evans helped elevate America's Great Musical Idiom from the dance floor to a higher aesthetic plane. Thanks to a recent full-length biography of Evans and new reissue of an important 1970s-era album, the spotlight has returned to illumine his long and rich career, making this NYC fete of his work even more timely and worthwhile.
The Gil Evans Orchestra thrives today under the guidance of two of the late arranger-pianist's closest musical spirits: his widow, Anita Evans, and his 37-year-old son Miles, the band's conductor and trumpeter. Noah Evans, first born son of Gil and Anita is in charge of sound and technical matters for the Orchestra. As a vehicle for some of his most personalized compositions and re-inventions, the orchestra has actually been in existence since the mid-1930s, when Evans first fronted a big band with his own charts in California. He continued to lead his orchestra through the 1950s, rising to prominence through his collaborations with Miles Davis, and persevered with his prodigiously talented and loyal ensemble of musicians through some of jazz's leanest years until his death in 1988. Today, the orchestra features a stellar lineup with several long-time cohorts and includes trumpeter Lew Soloff, who started with Evans in 1965, saxophonists Bob Berg and Chris Hunter, trombonist Conrad Herwig and guitarist Dave Fiuczynski. The high-stepping rhythm section consists of keyboardist Delmar Brown, bassist Mark Egan and drummer's drummer Kenwood Dennard.
It's fitting that this 90th birthday tribute of Gil Evans and his music be on a Monday night, since the orchestra's long-standing regular appearance at Sweet Basil's and elsewhere in NYC during the 1980s was on Mondays, says Anita Evans. “For me, the true reward of all this, always, is hearing Gil's music played 'live' by a great bunch of musicians."
Evans's renown as an arranger and orchestrator grew exponentially during his association with jazz's leading modernist and his son's namesake, Miles Davis. The author of the charts for three of Davis's legendary albums--"Miles Ahead," “Porgy and Bess" and “Sketches of Spain"--Evans, a modest artist of the highest order, was also at trumpeter's elbow during the famed “Birth of the Cool" sessions in 1948, as well as at the historic 1961 Carnegie Hall concerts. Even in the late 1960s, as Evans was becoming more interested in incorporating electric instruments and synthesizers into his work, Davis would still call on the arranger for ideas and new charts.
Born in Toronto, Canada, Evans assumed his forward-looking nature early on while arranging music for Claude Thornhill's Orchestra in the 1940s, and was still subtly pursuing his modernist bent for Helen Merrill when Davis hired him, all of which is detailed in “Gil Evans: Out of the Cool," a critically-acclaimed biography written by Stephanie Stein Crease and published last year. Evans's inventive lineups of diverse instrumentalists and his unique orchestrations undoubtedly gave jazz a more “impressionistic" dimension, and his choice of material ranged from his own thoughtful compositions to stunning re-makes culled from the entire jazz canon and beyond. His superb 1974 album, “The Gil Evans Orchestra Plays the Music of Jimi Hendrix," newly reissued on Bluebird/RCA Victor, certainly underscores the leader's affinity for engaging material and his audacity to shape it anew.
The extent to which Gil Evans blazed a path for the modern jazz ensemble can be heard in its expressive glory at Joe's Pub on May 13th, and fans of the famed arranger's career and work are sure to have already circled their calendars.
Set times for this special tribute appearance by the Gil Evans Orchestra will be 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.
Tickets are $20 per set and can be ordered though Tele-Charge at (212) 239-6200.
For dinner reservations at Joe's Pub (for early show only), located at 425 Lafayette Street, Manhattan, call (212) 539-8778.
For more info check out
For more information contact All About Jazz.
