Can Cankaya, William Paterson University, 2009).ĭuring an interview in Jazzwise (Sept 2012) by Brian Priestly from 1972, when Bill Evans was playing one of his Ronnie Scott’s residencies, Brian asked “Presumably you’re still continuing to feature standard ballads?” Bill: “Yeah, we play quite a bit of standards. (An analysis of Bill Evans’ approach to playing the melody of selected jazz ballads, thesis by M.I. Evans effectively combined all of these devices together to produce his own original, significant, and influential solo piano style. Yet his performance is the quintessence of it.” By analysing the devices Evans used for the interpretation of the original melodies of the standards were: diminution and augmentations, rhythmic displacements, drop voicings, inner lines, rubato, substitute chords, voice leading, chord anticipations, fills, chromatic approach chords, left hand lines, melody with thirds, fourths, fifths and sixths, contrary motion and use of changing key centers. Saxophonist Cannonball Adderley stated: “Bill Evans has rare originality and taste and the even rarer ability to make his conception of a standard seem the definitive way to play it.” Jazzpianist Warren Bernhardt said of Bill Evans “Everything he plays seems to be the distillation of the music, he never states the original melody. His reharmonizations are so beautiful that when playing standards, most musicians use his changes, rather than the original ones. He was able to create alterations to a tune’s original harmony in short order, often in the studio just before recording a tune. He was a master in interpreting standards, he made arrangements, reharmonized them and rephrased the melodic lines. There’s still explorations that I haven’t begun to make yet into handling these things.” In an interview with Rubin and Enstice for the book Jazz Spoken Here (Da Capo Press, 1994) Evans stated, “I respect the American popular song very much and some of the masters that have composed in that form … and I studied this very hard, analytically and diligently as I was growing…. Evans’ focus settled on traditional jazz standards and his own original compositions.

Bill evans peace piece midi