Gil Evans, Acclaimed Arranger for Musical Greats, Dies at 75

Gil Evans, the composer and latent pianist whose lengthy and acclaimed career segued from the brassy big band of Claude Thornhill to the cool jazz combos of Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan, has died in Cuernavaca, Mexico, his wife reported Monday.

Anita Evans said from her home in New York that her husband had gone to Mexico with their two sons a month ago to recuperate from prostate surgery and died there Sunday of peritonitis. He was 75.

A composer who had led his own bands off and on since 1933, Evans was working until the day of his death, his wife said, and had taken his synthesizer on his recuperative trip.

He was scheduled to resume his weekly Monday night shows at New York’s Sweet Basil club in July.

A planned tour of the Evans aggregation will proceed as scheduled with his son, Miles, leading the Gil Evans Orchestra, Mrs. Evans said.

“Gil left tons of music to be carried forth,” she added.

Evans, who in recent years was considered a giant among jazz arrangers, had labored in relative obscurity before those plaudits surfaced. And they came primarily because of his brilliant collaborations with Davis on such landmark albums as “Miles Ahead.”

Times jazz critic Leonard Feather said Evans left a legacy of innovative arranging, beginning with his early Thornhill years, when his work was known for “a fullness and orchestral variety compared to which the average swing band arrangement of the 1930s seemed like the work of a child playing with blocks.”

Feather went on to cite the “Miles Ahead,” “Porgy and Bess” and the “Sketches of Spain” albums, which showcased Davis’ cool style.

“They were really among the most brilliant orchestral jazz records made by anybody,” Feather said. “He made brilliant use of tone colors.”

Evans’ career was marked by three distinct phases: his arrangements for Thornhill from 1941 to 1948; his collaborations with Davis, Mulligan and John Lewis in a series of recordings for Capitol in 1949-50, and then his re-teaming with Davis as head of a 20-piece band that produced the three landmark albums.

Early Recordings

One of his early recordings with Davis, “Boplicity,” qualified Evans “as one of jazz’s greatest composer-arrangers,” said famed French critic and historian Andre Hodeir.

Evans, who never played any instrument professionally until 1952, when he took up the piano, was born Ian Ernest Gilmore Green in Toronto, Ontario, to Australian parents. He grew up in Stockton, Calif., learned to play piano by ear and started his first band while still in school.

He led his own bands (including one that was taken over by Skinnay Ennis) until joining Thornhill and introducing French horns to the brass section, producing tonal textures not heard elsewhere. He became well known among musicians but unheralded by both the public and critics.

After wartime service, he free-lanced as an arranger in New York City and began experimenting with be-bop.

Started Own Band

In 1958, he started recording with his own band, producing the lush sounds he had fashioned for others and in recent years adding electronically amplified instruments.

He was a founding artist of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington and toured from Europe to Japan in addition to domestic appearances at college campuses, night clubs and concert halls and museums.

Evans recently had worked on a record album with Helen Merrill, and Davis told Mrs. Evans last week that he had just written a new tune, titled “Gil Evans.”

“He never wasted a melody. He never wasted a phrase,” Davis said Monday after learning of his old friend’s death.

“What he did to the texture of an orchestration, what he did with pop songs was like writing an original piece,” Davis said in a telephone interview with United Press International.

“Students will discover him. They’ll have to take his music apart layer by layer. That’s how they’ll know what kind of genius he was.”