@Nick Batzdorf said:
Only half à propos this thread, Bill Evans' version of "The Dolphin" is just freaky. It's one thing to play a complicated tune the way he does, but then he goes back and comes up with a great reharmonization for it on the fly. Humans aren't supposed to be able to do that.
Nick, there are so many great examples of that in my father's oeuvre. He was an enigma to be sure. It can be mind blowing.
Many times he said he was not naturally gifted. Not a freak of nature. That he practiced at least 8 hours a day every day of his life, and that what you hear as very complex and sophisticated was indeed the result of incredibly hard work. I witnessed this as a child, and my mother has told me the same.
On a side note, it was rather touching for me to learn, after I chose film scoring as my passion in this life, in an interview with my father a year before his passing he was asked if there was anything he wanted to do besides Jazz ... He answered "I would like to get into scoring films." Talk about freaking me out. First of all, you have to understand that my interest in music was purely genetic. There was a piano in the house. My mother never pushed me at all. I naturally gravitated towards it, asked for lessons, wanted to have an hour lesson twice a week at the age of 7, which by 8 turned into 3 lessons per week, 1 hour theory, 1 hour Piano, and 1 hour Trumpet. I did not even know my father was a musician (or realize it per sey, make the connection), until I was about 10 years old. And yet the moment I turned 9, I heard some music in the film THE 39 STEPS by Alfred Hitchcock, and it was the first time I realized that movies had music in them. At that point I said "that is what I want to do with my life. Write music for movies." I got my first job at age 12. I got my first film at age 21. It was when I was 24 that I learned of what my father had said. It was 15 years of confirmation in a single instant, that I indeed was following in my father's footsteps. He died when I was 5. So it's just incredibly touching to have his "approval", in that sense.
Anyway, alas I rambled on.
Basically I just wanted to say, that as a musician, an artist, I think he was much more than most people realize, and that music at that level is not an accident, improvised, or universally accepted without intending to do so.
How many of you have decided that your contribution deserves 8 hours of fortification through practice every day of your life? That is dedication of the highest. And it is very inspiring, at least to me.
Evan Evans
P.S. By the way, i recognize and love my father's music, completely unbiased from the fact that he was my father. I can assure you of this, since I disliked Jazz music for most of my life. It certainly was not something that was drilled into me. I discovered my father just like the rest of you ... through his music. And most people I meet in his circles, knew him better than I did. Yet, I consider him to be a genius of the 20th Century, as was Bernard Herrmann who wrote in pen and did not make mistakes.