GIL EVANS
Genres: Progressive Big Band, Latin Jazz, Classic Fusion, Avant-Garde Jazz • Canada

Gil Evans (13 May 1912 – 20 March 1988) was a jazz musician and an important innovator of big band jazz in the United States as an arranger, composer, band leader, and pianist. He had a seminal role in the development of cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz and jazz-rock. Gil Evans was born in Toronto, Canada, as Ian Ernest Gilmore Green and early took the family name Evans from his stepfather. The family soon moved to California, where he spent the first decades of his life. From 1946 onwards he lived and worked in New York City. In 1941-48 he worked as an arranger for the sophisticated Claude Thornhill Orchestra, from 1946 on in New York City. His modest basement apartment behind a Chinese laundry soon became a meeting place for musicians looking to develop the music from bebop, though Charlie Parker himself was among those involved. With Miles read more...