Individualism: Gil Evans in the 1960s
Posted in Shows on Jun 2nd, 2008
Gil Evans, a Canadian-born pianist and composer, “enormously expanded the vocabulary of the jazz orchestra,” as writer Gene Lees pointed out, reducing the standard big-band instrumentation, restraining its vibrato, and adding flutes, oboes, English and French horns, and tubas. Self-taught as an arranger, he created a quietly dramatic, dark-hued sound-world that drew on a multiplicity of influences ranging from Spanish music and the French Impressionists to Duke Ellington and…
This week on Night Lights we’ll feature the fifth and sixth volumes of Decca’s 1950s Jazz Studio series–the label’s West Coast-influenced answer to Norman Granz’s Verve jam session releases. V. 5, led by pianist and arranger Ralph Burns, includes trumpeter Joe Newman and little-known alto saxophonist Dave Schildkraut, who was once mistaken…
In the early 1950s vibraphonist Teddy Charles made a series of records with Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, and others, that still escapes easy definition today–was it Third Stream? Was it West Coast? Was it cool jazz? We’ll hear selections from his albums…
This week on Night Lights it’s “Jazz Studio 3 & 4: John Graas and Jack Millman,” two more entries in Decca’s mid-1950s Jazz Studio series. John Graas was a classically-trained French horn player who worked with several famous big bands in the 1940s and who studied with both Lennie Tristano and West Coast music guru Wesley La Violette. In the 1950s he…
