Bill Evans (1929–1980)

Born:

16th August 1929 in Plainfield, New Jersey, USA.

Bill Evans’s grave in Baton Rouge

Died:

15th September 1980 in New York, New York, USA.

Buried:

Roselawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum, Baton Rouge, East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, USA.

Most famous single:

• Waltz for Debby. (See below for a video.)

Some great albums:

• Sunday at the Village Vanguard (1961).
• Waltz for Debby (1961).
• Undercurrent (1963).
• Conversations with Myself (1963).
• Further Converstations with Myself (1967).
• Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival (1968).
• The Bill Evans Album (1971).
• You Must Believe in Spring (1977).

Some interesting facts:

• He was a piano player.
• He was the piano player on the best selling jazz album of all time, ‘Kind of Blue’ (see the Miles Davis page). He also helped to write one of the pieces on this album, ‘Blue in Green’.
• His piano playing has had a big influence on other jazz pianists, such as Herbie Hancock.
• He was trained to play classical music. Much of his music is quite like some composers of classical music, such as Debussy.
• Unlike a lot of jazz pianists before him, his music is often slow and quiet. He is especially known making the piano sound as if it were singing a song.
• Most of his music is with a trio (a trio is a group of three musicians playing together). The instruments in the trio were piano (played by himself), bass and drums.
• This music for trio is some of the greatest jazz trio music ever!

Memorial Website