(b Toronto, 13 May 1912; d Cuernavaca, Mexico, 20 March 1988). American jazz arranger, composer, pianist and bandleader. A self-taught musician, he led his own band in southern California from 1933 to 1938. When the singer Skinnay Ennis then took over the band, Evans stayed on as arranger. In 1941 he joined Claude Thornhill’s orchestra in the same capacity, contributing in 1946–7 such outstanding arrangements as Donna Lee (1947, Har.), Anthropology, Yardbird Suite and Robbins’ Nest (all 1947, Col.). In these works and others of the period Evans used two french horns and a tuba (in addition to the standard swing era big-band instrumentation); this, along with a restrained vibrato in the saxophones and brass, produced a rich, dark-textured, ‘cool’ orchestral sound, foreshadowed only by Duke Ellington and Eddie Sauter. Emphasizing ensemble over improvised solo, Evans’s scores for Thornhill were far from being straightforward arrangements – they were in essence ‘recompositions’ and ‘orchestral improvisations’ on the original materials (for example, lines borrowed from Charlie Parker, popular songs and classical works such as Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition).
From 1948 to 1950 Evans contributed prominently to Miles Davis’s nonet recordings for Capitol (later issued as Birth of the Cool). In his memorable scores Boplicity (1949) and Moon Dreams (1950), Evans captured the essential sound and texture of the Thornhill band with a smaller ensemble. Oddly, his work for both Davis and Thornhill was ignored by critics and jazz audiences alike. After a period of relative obscurity, during which he worked in radio and television, Evans returned to jazz with three notable albums for Columbia, all written for and featuring Davis: Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1958) and Sketches of Spain (1959–60). In these, as well as in New Bottle, Old Wine (1958, WP), Evans extended his earlier orchestral concepts to larger instrumental forces (up to 20), often achieving a distinctive synthesis of varied timbral mixtures in which opaque, almost cluster-like voicings alternate with rich polyphonic textures, the whole being couched in an advanced harmonic language.
From the early 1960s Evans made several attempts to form permanent orchestras, but these were unable to establish themselves, although they occasionally produced such excellent recordings as The Individualism of Gil Evans (1963–4, Verve), Blues in Orbit (1969–71, Ampex) and Priestess (1977, Ant.). He also turned increasingly to composition, writing such notable works as Flute Song, Las Vegas Tango, Proclamation, Variations on The Misery, Anita’s Dance and (in collaboration with Miles Davis) Hotel Me and General Assembly. Later Evans incorporated electrified instruments (piano, bass guitar, synthesizer, etc.) into his ensembles, and tended to leave more space for solo improvisation in his arrangements and compositions. This led to a considerable loosening of his style in both form and texture compared with the more compact structures and veiled sonorities of his earlier arrangements.
Although he was at first influenced by the middle-period works of Duke Ellington, Evans developed a style wholly his own, memorable especially for its richly chromatic, though always tonally oriented, harmonic language and its seemingly inexhaustible variety of timbral blendings; no mere colouristic effects, these are often the very substance of his art, providing imaginative frameworks for his soloists in ways equalled in the history of jazz only by Morton, Ellington and Mingus. Even in his most elaborate scores Evans succeeded in preserving the essential spontaneity and improvisatory nature of jazz, achieving a rare symbiosis between composed and improvised elements.
C. Fox: ‘Gil Evans: Experiment with Texture’, These Jazzmen of our Time, (by) R. Horricks and others (London, 1959), 93–108
D. Heckman: ‘Gil Evans on his Own’, Jazz Review, iii/3 (1960), 14–17
D. Heckman: Gil Evans: a List of Compositions Licensed by BMI (New York, 1961)
L. Feather: ‘The Modulated World of Gil Evans’, Down Beat, xxxiv/4 (1967), 14
R. Palmer: ‘Refocus on Gil Evans’, Down Beat, xli/10 (1974), 12–13
A.J. Smith: ‘Gil Evans: 21st Century Synthesized Man’, Down Beat, xliii/10 (1976), 14
L. Tomkins: ‘Gil Evans’, Crescendo International, xvi (1978), no.9, pp.20–22; no.10, p.4, 6, 36; no.11, p.22, 24, 28 [interview]
J. Chambers: Milestones, i: The Music and Times of Miles Davis to 1960 (Toronto, 1983)
T. Tajiri: Gil Evans Discography, 1941–1982 (Tokyo, 1983)
R. Horricks: Svengali, or The Orchestra Called Gil Evans (Tunbridge Wells, 1984) [incl. discography]
GUNTHER SCHULLER