Monday, March 11, 2019

Gil Evans’ Sons Honor Father’s Legacy

from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording

It would probably be fair to say that Gil Evans was the first jazzman whose work persuaded me that I should be listening to jazz as seriously as I listened to classical music. The summer following my sophomore year in high school, I got to participate in a course in microbiology organized for high school students at La Salle University in Philadelphia. When we were not working in the laboratory, we had access to a student common room that happened to have a record player and a modest collection of recordings. One of those recordings was Sketches of Spain, and I was hooked from the opening measures of the first track. Only very much later did I learn that the track involved an arrangement of the second movement of a guitar concerto by Joaquín Rodrigo; and I think it was not until my freshman year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that I came to appreciate that the arrangement was by Gil Evans. (By that time my listening had expanded to include not only Miles Davis but also Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus.)

At the end of this week, Bopper Spock Suns Music will release the first of three albums conceived as a tribute to Evans’ legacy as both an arranger and a composer. The project is a joint effort of Evans’ two sons, Noah and Miles (the latter named after you-know-who); and the collective title of the albums is The Gil Evans Orchestra – Hidden Treasures. The title of the first album is Monday Nights; and it is named for the Monday Night Orchestra that Evans began to lead at the Greenwich Village club Sweet Basil in 1983. My guess is that these gigs served as an affectionate nod to The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, which had been giving Monday night concerts at the Village Vanguard since 1965. As might be expected, Amazon.com currently has a Web page that is processing pre-orders for this new release.

The album presents two original Evans compositions and one significant arrangement. The more substantial of the originals is “Eleven.” This was composed jointly with Davis and originally appeared under the title “Petits Machins” (little stuff) on the latter’s 1968 album Filles de Kilimanjaro, which means that it can also be found in the six-CD collection Miles Davis Quintet, 1965–’68. As might be expected, the trumpet work on this track is taken by “the other Miles.” “Eleven” is preceded by the much shorter “Moonstruck,” which serves up a taste of Evans’ whimsical side. The significant arrangement is of “Lunar Eclipse,” composed by the eclectic Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, with a nod to Kikuchi’s own piano work taken by Gil Goldstein, introduced by some aggressive drumming from Kenwood Dennard.

Like his namesake, Miles Evans is also a trumpeter and contributes to all tracks of the album. He is also the composer of the second track, “LL Funk,” another platform for a powerful beat from Dennard. The other two tracks are also compositions by members of the orchestra. The album opens with “Subway” by keyboardist Pete Levin; and “LL Funk” is followed by “I Surrender,” composed jointly by Delmar Brown on synthesizer and saxophonist Alex Forster.

In the context of my own listening experiences, I found this album to be a thoroughly engaging examination of how a significant era of past jazz history can continue to resonate in the immediate present. The album does not account for the full extent of Evans’ eclecticism, but there is no way that any single album can do that. However, the impact that this new release has had on me now has me curious about what Evans’ sons will be offering in the two remaining albums of their project.

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