The interplay between Evans and LeFaro is crucial, for through their highly attuned collaboration, you clearly hear the effects of Evans’ belief that the root note in the chord should be left to the bassist: the bass takes a more prominent role in melody and Evans is freer to play with chord structure, creating impressionistic and original chord combinations that are fresh and intensely pleasing to the ear. Portrait in Jazz is also a set of remarkably sensitive interpretations created by a highly interwoven trio of Bill Evans on piano, Scott LeFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums. Portrait in Jazz is an ode from the lover to the beloved, with Bill Evans in the role of suitor. A great musician fulfills his or her life purpose in music. Music is their raison d’être, the endlessly alluring partner they are unable to resist. Do you know how many people take up music just to get laid? Or just to make money? A great musician may have those goals as well, but they’re not the only goals. This may seem like one of my digressions, but it really isn’t. I want every sexual encounter to be a fucking masterpiece. My goal in taking music lessons was always to learn how music worked, not to become a musician my goal in sex has always been to become the greatest fuck on the planet. In ten years of flute and piano lessons, I might have experienced what Bill Evans was talking about once a year when all the practice paid off and I finally nailed a piece. It’s easy to be patient when the journey itself provides ample opportunity to get your rocks off. With the erotic, your pleasure centers are active even while you’re learning through experience, and they are active in the fantasy and preparation stages. I can apply that kind of patience and discipline to the erotic arts, but not to music. But, actually, it takes years and years of playing to develop the facility so that you can forget all of that and just relax, and just play.” You use your intellect to take apart the materials and learn to understand them and learn to work with them. He also understood the limits of intellect and had the patience and discipline to build the skills one needs to become a true artist: “I mean, jazz is a certain process that is not an intellectual process. Here’s why: Bill Evans had a more creative mind than I do and could see possibilities where I see dead ends. Why would anyone, especially a pianist at Bill Evans’ level, bother with stuff like “Witchcraft” and “Some Day My Prince Will Come?” I mean, we’re talking standardized standards written by people like Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Cy Coleman, Cole Porter and (gasp!) Rodgers & Hart. When I research a jazz album and see a track listing consisting primarily of standards, my modus operandi is to pass, and hope I can find something with original compositions.Īlthough Bill Evans hardly looked the type to shatter a lady’s resistance (until he grew a beard later in the ’60s), he took my defenses and smashed them into tiny shards with Portrait in Jazz. All save two of the tracks are standards, some of them songs that usually set my teeth to grinding mode. I certainly approve of Parker’s remodeling of “Embraceable You,” but I always skip “Bye Bye Blackbird” on Miles Davis’ ‘Round About Midnight and don’t get me started on Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things.” Trying to hold the images of John Coltrane and Julie Andrews in my little blonde brain at the same time is asking too much of me. Once Coleman Hawkins reconstructed “Body and Soul,” the practice became widespread, with mixed results. This bias means that despite my admiration for Charlie Parker’s reconstructive surgery on various standards, I tend to view with sour disfavor the various efforts by jazz musicians to translate the stuff you hear on the Easy Listening stations into jazz pieces. I don’t want the standard model of anything, especially music. The moniker, “standards,” is the ultimate turn-off. I despise musicals and find most standards from the Great American Songbook boring.
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