The Paris AtlasCharting the artists, works, and places worth returning to.
  • Musician
· American · 1929–1980

Bill Evans

The jazz pianist whose extended harmonies, modal color, and treatment of chords as sonorities carried Debussy's language into modern jazz piano.

Details

Lived
1929–1980
Born
1929
Died
1980
Nationality
American
Roles
Musician

People they knew

Documented connections — every one carries its source.

Chet Baker

  • Musician
  • Singer

Collaborated with · 1958–1959

Evans played piano on most of the Riverside album Chet, recorded at Reeves Sound Studios in New York on 30 December 1958 and 19 January 1959 with Herbie Mann, Pepper Adams, Kenny Burrell and Paul Chambers. It is the fullest meeting on record between Baker's plain trumpet line and the harmonic language Evans was then building.

Chet Baker Catalog — session dates, studios and personnel

Who they drew from

Influence running inward — the writers and artists whose work fed theirs. Admiration is not acquaintance; these edges claim neither a meeting nor a friendship.

Illustrated portrait of Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy

Debussy's extended harmonies, modal color and conception of chords as sonorities rather than merely functional steps in a progression became part of Evans's vocabulary and, through him, part of the language of modern jazz piano.

Alex Ross, The Velvet Revolution of Claude Debussy (2018)

Sourced claims

Every connection the graph holds for Bill, with the evidence behind it.

Influenced by

Claude Debussy

Debussy's extended harmonies, modal color and conception of chords as sonorities rather than merely functional steps in a progression became part of Evans's vocabulary and, through him, part of the language of modern jazz piano.

Alex Ross, The Velvet Revolution of Claude Debussy (2018)

Collaborated with · 1958–1959

Chet Baker

Evans played piano on most of the Riverside album Chet, recorded at Reeves Sound Studios in New York on 30 December 1958 and 19 January 1959 with Herbie Mann, Pepper Adams, Kenny Burrell and Paul Chambers. It is the fullest meeting on record between Baker's plain trumpet line and the harmonic language Evans was then building.

Chet Baker Catalog — session dates, studios and personnel