Bill Evans: Words worth repeating
Bill Evans: Words worth repeating
Bill's last performance at the New York club Fat Tuesday's in September 1980. He completed the two sets during his first night, on September 10, but called in sick the following day and died on September 15, at the age of 51. RIP.
"The whole process of learning the facility of being able to play jazz is to take these problems from the outer level in, one by one, and to stay with it at a very intense, conscious-concentration level until that process becomes secondary and subconscious. Now, when that becomes subconscious, then you can begin concentrating on that next problem, which will allow you to do a little bit more.
I don’t consider myself as talented as many people but in some ways that was an advantage because I didn’t have a great facility immediately so I had to be more analytical and in a way — that forced me to build something.
Most people just don’t realize the immensity of the problem and, either because they can’t conquer it immediately, think that they haven’t got the ability, or they’re so impatient to conquer it that they never do see it through. If you do understand the problem then you can enjoy your whole trip through.
People tend to approximate the product rather than attacking it in a realistic, true way at any elementary level — regardless of how elementary — but it must be entirely true and entirely real and entirely accurate. They would rather approximate the entire problem than to take a small part of it and be real and true about it. To approximate the whole thing in a vague way gives you a feeling that you’ve more or less touched the thing, but in this way you just lead yourself toward confusion and ultimately you’re going to get so confused that you’ll never find your way out.
It is true of any subject that the person that succeeds in anything has a realistic viewpoint at the beginning and [knows] that the problem is large and that he has to take it a step at a time and that he has to enjoy the step-by-step learning procedure. They’re trying to do a thing in a way that is so general [that] they can’t possibly build on that. If they build on that, they’re building on top of confusion and vagueness and they can’t possibly progress. If you try to approximate something that is very advanced and don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t advance".
"I’ve come to the conclusion that synths are like potatoes, they’re no good raw—you’ve got to cook ‘em, and I cooked these sounds for months before I got them to the point where they sounded musical to me." Lyle Mays
Re: Bill Evans: Words worth repeating
One of my favorite influences.
He even killed it doing that gay theme song from the old Spartacus movie...
Wise words from a humble giant.
He even killed it doing that gay theme song from the old Spartacus movie...
Wise words from a humble giant.
Re: Bill Evans: Words worth repeating
apropros.
- roy thinnes
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Re: Bill Evans: Words worth repeating
thanks for reminding me to put the needle on that record again.
Re: Bill Evans: Words worth repeating
You even have the Albums.
The last actual Vinyl Jazz LP I heard was Ahmad Jamal.
Upright Bass, etc.
Jazz albums of quartets and trios have a unique sound quality.
Lucky You RoyT.
The last actual Vinyl Jazz LP I heard was Ahmad Jamal.
Upright Bass, etc.
Jazz albums of quartets and trios have a unique sound quality.
Lucky You RoyT.
- roy thinnes
- Posts: 651
- Joined: Thu Jan 09, 2003 4:00 pm
- Location: Graz
- Contact:
Re: Bill Evans: Words worth repeating
My luck was that when I was a kid my brother bought a lot of Jazz albums, and some of them ended up in my own record collection when he moved out