Hi friends, I'm happy to chord-ially invite you to enjoy my new free in-depth Bill Evans master class, located at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpRpAShR9lQ

The class includes an analysis of Bill's solo classic A Time For Love, plus video recordings of Bill playing solo, and new solo performances by yours truly. It took a team of 12 brain surgeons from UCLA medical center to put this together, I think you may enjoy it:)

Blessings and keep swingin

Dave Frank
www.davefrankjazz.com
NYC

Dave, that was fantastic! I learned a lot from that. In fact, it affected my practice and I started harmonizing solo lines.

Did Bill Evans arrange this ahead of time, you think? Or he just did this on the fly? I'm guessing he worked it out at least in general.

Glad you liked it. Bill heavily arranged his things, although he was capable of subtle variations in the performance-to-performance playing of his arranged pieces. You can hear the combo of arrangements and improv if you listen to the Alone record, where there are multiple takes of a few songs. It's like he had a basic arrangement of the material prepared, but he would vary it based on his feeling in the moment. It's awesome to hear him do this. The trio pieces were more heavily arranged, probably because of the other guys involved. Some people (Tristano included, he told me so) were put off by the arranged aspect, but if carpentry was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me:0

DF

Ha! I heard that same Tristano quote re: BE from my teacher (his student) many years ago. Tristano and Evans have very different musical perspectives and priorities. I love them both, wouldn't dare choose.

Dave, your tutorials are a wonderful resource.

I'm having trouble finding the sheet music to 'A Time for Love' ..I'd really like to study this. I have visited your website Dave.

thanks.

Hi Oun, the transcription is now up at www.davefrankjazz.com, click "the life and music of bil evans" on the bottom of the welcome page.

Dave

Great class. Really deep and beautifully prepared. The flow from one topic to the next is perfect, and I love the new angle.

LOL! So Bill was human after all. When I was listening to the changing styles every few bars, I said to myself "Whoa...this is impossible to even think about".

But then when you referred to "Arranging" and "Classical Music" in the same sentence I was laughing hard at the heresy. From a jazz pianist, no less.

Did Tristano ever mention all the stuff that Bill Evans steal from him? I was working on Hemiolas and the stuff from Tristano is the same as Bill's, except that it was more harmonized.

Lennie's exact words to me were: "Bill Evans plays some nice chords, but it was all arranged". But then LT was always way too critical of everybody. It had its place at the time to point out some of the limitations of some of the music of that time, but I think Lennie was heavy handed with his criticisms. That's my criticism of his criticisms hehe. Lennie and Charlie Banacos were the greatest men, musicians and teachers I ever knew, completely fabulous, revolutionary and spectacular on every level.

I doesn't matter, maybe Monet had some funny feelings about Manet, they're both ultimate masters!I know Bill was very aware of Lennie's playing, do you think LT was a big influence on Bill?

Bill's accomplishments, arrangements nonwithstanding, were just unbelievable to me. He figured out how to do all that stuff. Incredible!He was a fantastic improviser too.

The guy who isn't human is Keith. What he can do is utterly beyond any and all human limitations IMHO.

DF

hehe Dave, when you were reading Bill’s explanation to his flatmate, I was laughing real hard, I thought Bill can’t be human !

In Bill's autobiography, I read the Tristano was an influence. To be "frank", I didn't put much into this as I didn't understand what he took.

Then when I started studying a little bit of Bill's rhythmic displacement stuff, it became clear that Tristano did this first. I didn't know much about Tristano before.

So I have the sense that Bill took what he could from those ahead of him, and then built up from that. Clearly the harmonization/voicing stuff wasn't developed until Bill showed up.

I was working with my teacher on Ablution and he was pointing out how the line in the head (the hemiolas near the end) was something that Bill frequently used, the only difference was that Bill harmonized some of the notes in 5ths.

I'm wondering too if the strong upbeat accents in his swing style took from Tristano since it is obvious that Tristano focused more on accent control than anyone else the time.

You're lucky to have learned from that generation Dave!

My teacher is heavily influenced by Bill so that influence has been passed to me. But I guess that's the same for most of us

Keith -- darn right! Makes me want to give up learning sometimes Seems so impossible. Chick too.

Thanks for doing the Bill masterclass. This one is going to be a classic.

Hi JW
Did Bill write an autobiography ? What is it called ? I would like to buy it.

Custard, did I say autobiography? I meant "biography". No, he did not write anything himself. In fact, it is sad that we don't know more about his thoughts other than the limited number of interviews he has done on TV.

His influence over Jazz cannot be underestimated. And Dave Frank has improved our understanding of some aspect of what he did, but there's more. And it may take many many more masterclasses to make a dent.

The book I read was:
Peter Pettinger: "How My Heart Sings"

JW
Thanks very much. It's somewhat a pity that Bill was such a humble and shy guy.
I've just read a book review of "How my heart sings" and I've put it on my wishlist. It's $100 for the hardback version at Amazon and Borders.
I read that Bill was left-handed. Do you remember this section from the book ? How could he pull off those complex RH harmonies ?!
"According to one anecdote, Evans – a leftie who revolutionized the left hand in jazz piano – once showed up for a gig with his right arm virtually useless. He had hit a nerve and temporarily disabled it while shooting heroin, and he performed a full week’s engagement at the Vanguard virtually one-handed, a morbid spectacle that drew other pianists to watch. He pulled it off, too, thanks in large measure to his virtuoso pedal technique. According to one bassist in the audience, “if you looked away, you couldn’t tell anything was wrong.”"

Dave,

Thanks so much for the Bill Evans introspective. It was terrific following your explanation of some of his techniques. Very informative and inspiring. The camera view of the keyboard was great.

Andy

A Time for Love is really a beautiful piece. I've never played anything with such surprising chords. .. it's way outside of my comfort zone.