Bill Evans Quotes

"The only thing I'm afraid of is death. When I was eighteen or nineteen I could have died. I was ready for death. Today, I'm not ready anymore. I've lost too much time as it is." - Bill Evans (when asked if he was afraid of getting old.)

source: Interview with Jazz Magazine (France), 1965

Bill Evans Quotes

"Not at all." - Bill Evans (when asked if he was interested in politics.)

source: Interview with Jazz Magazine (France), 1965

Bill Evans Quotes

"Freedom is to make room where there isn't any to start with. You take a music part. It seems there's no freedom in there, but if you take the time, and if you understand what's in the part, you'll find as much freedom as you want. You can also throw the part away, sit down on the piano, play with your elbows and say: `This is freedom.' Not for me. The most valuable freedom is the one which has strength, because it is won against something solid, something rigid." - Bill Evans

source: Interview with Jazz Magazine (France), 1965

Bill Evans Quotes

"In New York, it's pathetic to see so many superb musicians who are starving! Maybe somewhere else they would be kings, but in New York, they're nobody. I had to fight myself for a long time. When I arrived in New York, I had to wait three years before I made it. But it's very hard. If you succeed easily, you run the risk of falling back down as easily. But if you take the time and your talent is real, it will last." - Bill Evans

source: Interview with Jazz Magazine (France), 1965

Bill Evans Quotes

"I started to play piano at six. I used to play classical music and only what was written. If they'd asked to play the "Star Spangled Banner," I couldn't have done it without the part. At 12, I was starting to play in bands. I was playing what was written until the day I did something that wasn't. It was wonderful to find something that wasn't written and yet sounded good! That's what really led me to jazz." - Bill Evans

source: Interview with Jazz Magazine (France), 1965

Bill Evans Quotes

"I started professionally at 12 1/2. Everybody wants to play jazz after school, and out of hundreds of thousands, only a few people emerge. So it's not like if you decide what you're gonna do and shut yourself in a closet to practice." - Bill Evans

source: Interview with Jazz Magazine (France), 1965

Bill Evans Quotes

"I like [Thelonious Monk] a lot. What comes from Monk, some others absorbed it, too. He's such a strong and beautiful individual that imitating him is insulting him, and it's a mistake to do so. You give up your own personality when you imitate him--or anybody else for that matter." - Bill Evans

source: Interview with Jazz Magazine (France), 1965

Bill Evans Quotes

"I think first [I admired] Nat King Cole. A great pianist. And then Earl Hines, Bud Powell. Bud had been my greater influence because he's got a sense of the form. Also Dave Brubeck, George Shearing, Oscar Peterson, Al Haig, Lou Levy. You learn from everyone. From Nat King Cole I'd take rhythm and sparsity; from Dave Brubeck a particular voicing; from George Shearing also a voicing, but of another kind; from Oscar Peterson a powerful swing; from Earl Hines a sense of structure. Bud Powell has it all." - Bill Evans (on which piano players he admired most)

source: Interview with Jazz Magazine (France), 1965

Bill Evans Quotes

"I am worked hard to [become successful] and I had put all my hopes in it. But I see so many talented people who are not successful." - Bill Evans

source: Interview with Jazz Magazine (France), 1965

Bill Evans Quotes

"I hardly believe I'm as talented as some others. Someone with talent possesses a kind of facility and plays well as early as 16 or 17, much better than I could play myself at that age. I had to practice a lot and spend a lot of time searching and digging before I got anywhere. And because of that, I later became more aware of what I was doing. I wasn't an imitation. I found myself with a synthesis of the playing of many musicians. From this something came out and I think it's really mine." - Bill Evans

source: Interview with Jazz Magazine (France), 1965

Bill Evans Quotes

"I love impressionists. I love Debussy. He's one of my favorite composers. I'm not crazy about painting, but if I was, I would prefer the Impressionists. Sometimes, I feel like I'm living two hundred years behind, back in the eighteenth century, not in the twentieth. So I don't know if I'm an impressionist or not. I have the desire to change, but I feel I can't as long as I'm not able to replace what I'm doing by something better. I haven't found anything better yet, so I'm satisfied with what I have." - Bill Evans

source: Interview with Jazz Magazine (France), 1965

Bill Evans Quotes

"As the painter needs his framework of parchment, the improvising musical group needs its framework in time." - Bill Evans

source: 'Kind of Blue' liner notes.

Bill Evans Quotes

"I always like people who have developed long and hard, particularly through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think that what they arrive at is usually...deeper and more beautiful...than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning. I say this because it's a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don't have that ability. I didn't. I had to know what I was doing. And ultimately it turned out that these people weren't able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians. I believe in things that are developed through hard work." - Bill Evans

source: 'Metaphors for the Musician' by Randy Halberstadt.

Bill Evans Quotes

"Talent is cheap, and many talents treat themselves cheaply." - Bill Evans

Bill Evans Quotes

"There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere. The resulting pictures lack the complex composition and textures of ordinary painting, but it is said that those who see well find something captured that escapes explanation. This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflections, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician." (liner notes to Miles Davis' album, 'Kind of Blue') - Bill Evans

Bill Evans Quotes

"I'm a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective." - Bill Evans

Bill Evans Quotes

"I believe that all people are in possession of what might be called a 'universal musical mind.'" - Bill Evans

Bill Evans Quotes

"Especially, I want my work – and the trios, if possible – to sing." - Bill Evans

Bill Evans Quotes

"I'm using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable. I feel it's the only solution to that particular problem that I presented myself." - Bill Evans

Bill Evans Quotes

"It's performing without any really set basis for the lines and the content as such emotionally or, specifically, musically. And if you sit down and contemplate what you're going to do, and take five hours to write five minutes of music, then it's composed music. Therefore, I would put it in the classical or serious, whatever you want to call it, written-music category. So there's composed music and there's jazz. And to me anybody that makes music using the process that we are using in Jazz, is playing Jazz." - Bill Evans