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Bill Evans
Hard to tell what was going on. Had the father buggered
the son, or the daughter been seduced by her own mother? It was that kind
of play about that sort of people, billed as New Australian Work and given
its first airing in the distinguished setting of the Drama Theatre of the
Sydney Opera House. There were really no characters to speak of, just
unpleasant insinuations designed—and cleverly designed—to produce the
predictable sniggering on cue. We left at interval.
* * *
White wine at a quayside restaurant helped cleanse the
palate, but it wasn’t until we were riding home in the car that I found
something to soothe the mind: Bill Evans on piano. The silvery opening of
‘Round Midnight was a cool bath for raw nerves, and though you found
yourself vaguely wondering which overlaid track was producing the final
magical effect, that can happen when musical intelligence is at work.
I gather (reading some sleeve notes by Phil Bailey)
that Bill Evans was not the first to over-dub—as this melodious layering
of sound is unmelodiously called. But he must have been a lot more knowing
than the Chipmunks. Bailey writes that the technique
 was
a logical extension of the
conversational approach to trio playing that he
encouraged in his sidemen in live performances. If a pianist,
bassist, and drummer could develop a close rapport, Evans reasoned, three
parts played by the same person should have an even closer rapport. Evans
was obviously thinking of a true three-way interplay in which each
‘pianist’ would have the lead role at some time
during the track.
Contrapuntally meditating, extending, elaborating,
always sympathetic, the second and third interpretations enrich the first
and produce a remarkable mix. Evans himself wrote that
I remember that in recording the
selections, as I listened to the first track
while playing the second, and the first two while playing the third, the
process involved was an artificial duplication of simultaneous performance
in that each track represented a musical mind responding to another
musical mind or minds.
The argument that the same mind was involved in all
three performances could be advanced, but I feel that this is not quite
true. The functions of each track are different, and just as one in speech
feels a different state of mind making statements than in responding to
statements or commenting on the exchange involved in the first two, so I
feel that the music here has more the quality of a ‘trio’ than a solo
effort.
Another condition to be considered is that I know my
musical techniques more thoroughly than any other person so that, it seems
to me, I am equipped to respond to my previous
musical statements with the most accuracy and clarity.
So far as I know Bill Evans never went to Oxford, but
the introspective awareness he displays is worthy of a philosopher, and
not too bad a philosopher either. He died at 51 from the effects of
prolonged heroin addiction. Artists do strange things. But it’s not what
they do to their bodies, it’s what they make of their art that counts.
November 2005-10-18
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