William John Evans was born in Plainfield, N.J., August 16, 1929. He died on September 15, 1980. After Bud Powell, Bill was the next major innovative and influential jazz pianist.
His unique style, which has been adopted by countless pianists since, favored lush piano voicings, played with a sensitive, introspective touch. His improvisation tended to be lyrical and scale based (the left hand voicing often had a half-step interval buried in the middle of the chord.
He joined the Miles Davis Sextet in 1959, replacing Red Garland but before the end of the year, owing to his spontaneous success with critics and public, he left Miles to form his own trio.
Bill wanted the trio to “grow in the direction of simultaneous improvisation rather than one guy blowing followed by another guy blowing. If the bass player, for example, hears an idea that he wants to answer, why should he just keep playing 4/4 in the background? The men I’ll work with have learned how to do the regular kind of playing and so I think we now have the license to change it.