Bill Evans

From Conservapedia

Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist of Welsh and Ruthenian descent, who did much to establish the vocabulary of modern jazz piano.

By his own admission, as a teenager "I couldn't play My Country Tis Of Thee without the notes".

However, he eventually learnt to improvise, and was not content to stop after he had achieved a basic level of competence - drawing inspiration from European composers such as Chopin and Debussy, as well as from contemporary jazz pianists such as Horace Silver and Nat King Cole, he steadily established a style that was sufficiently distinctive and beautiful to attract the attention of Miles Davis.

A brief period with the Davis band culminated with the recording of Kind of Blue, a landmark jazz album that arguably could never have been what it was without Evans' diffident romanticism.

After leaving Miles Davis' band, he explored the possibilities of the jazz trio - his collaboration with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian produced the landmark Sunday At The Village Vanguard, a recording of the highlights of five sessions recorded at the famous New York club. Tragically, LaFaro died in a car crash just 11 days later.

Evans' career continued until his death in 1981.