Happy Birthday, Bill Evans

Jazz pianist Bill Evans was born on August 16, 1929, in Plainfield, New Jersey. As jazz critic Richard S. Ginell notes, "There is no more influential jazz-oriented pianist" than Evans, who "brought a new, introverted, relaxed, lyrical, European classical sensibility into jazz."

A wonderful biography of Evans is Peter Pettinger's Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings. (Available from Amazon.com.)

In his book, The 101 Best Jazz Albums, Len Lyons recommends two albums by Evans, The Village Vanguard Sessions and Intuition. Both are available from Amazon.com: the remastered The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 and Intuition.

Evans, who rarely played Thelonious Monk's compositions, plays Monk's "Bemsha Swing" here:

Robert
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