The white face of Bill Evans
stands out among the players of hard bop. It was under the fingers of
this young pianist that some of the hottest preoccupations of the moment
were crystallized.
When, on 15 December 1958, he recorded 'Peace
Piece' as an accompanied piano solo, he pushed his taste for spareness
to the extreme. In it, he improvised on two endlessly repeated chords
for almost seven minutes. Concentrating on such minimalism, he explored
the scale corresponding to these chords, but not without taking the
liberty to wander off into neighboring scales.
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| Bill Evans |
In doing so,he
drew on the teaching of composer George Russell, whose theories, found
in his 'Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization', offered a new
approach to jazz musicians: rather than contend with the increasingly
elaborate chord changes required by fifties jazz, a modal approach
(based on the notes in one scale) offered new simplicity. Modal jazz,
often inspired by non-European musical forms, became widespread in the
sixties. On the one hand, with modal jazz and the blossoming of a new
lyricism harmonic language would be reborn; on the other, it would find
its own negation in the upcoming explosion of free jazz.
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| John Coltrane (L) and George Russell (R) |
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