Gil Evans, a Canadian-born pianist and composer, “enormously expanded the vocabulary of the jazz orchestra,” as writer Gene Lees pointed out, reducing the standard big-band instrumentation, restraining its vibrato, and adding flutes, oboes, English and French horns, and tubas. Self-taught as an arranger, he created a quietly dramatic, dark-hued sound-world that drew on a multiplicity of influences ranging from Spanish music and the French Impressionists to Duke Ellington and the bebop revolutionaries of the 1940s. Trumpeter Miles Davis once said of Evans, “He used to just go inside of music and pull things out another person normally wouldn’t have heard.”

Evans is best known to jazz fans for his late-1940s and 1950s collaborations with Davis that yielded classics such as Miles Ahead. Although he seemed to spend much of the 1960s lying low, he made two of his finest records—Out of the Cool and The Individualism of Gil Evans–attempted several more projects with Davis, and helped craft albums for guitarist Kenny Burrell and singer Astrud Gilberto. We’ll hear music from all of these sessions, as well as a track from Evans’ end-of-decade LP Blues in Orbit.

Watch Gil Evans with Miles Davis at the end of the 1950s:

Air date: June 7, 2008

Read More: Astrud Gilberto, big bands, cool, Gil Evans, Kenny Burrell, Miles Davis

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