During his kaleidoscopic quarter-century as a professional jazz musician, pianist Orrin Evans has become the model of a fiercely independent artist who pushes the envelope in all directions. Evans upholds that reputation on his 20th album, Magic of Now (Smoke Sessions), on which he helms a multi-generational A-list quartet through an eight-piece program that exemplifies state-of-the-art modern jazz. From first note to last, the members, convening as a unit for the first time, display the cohesion and creative confidence of old friends, mirroring the leader’s predisposition for finding beauty in the heat of the moment. Although he’s never had the support of a major label, Evans has ascended to top-of-the-pyramid stature on his instrument, as affirmed by a #1-ranking as “Rising Star Pianist” in the 2018 DownBeat Critics Poll. Grammy nominations for the Smoke Sessions albums The Intangible Between and Presence, by Evans’ raucous, risk-friendly Captain Black Big Band, cement his bona fides as a bandleader & composer. Mr. Evans bedrocks his speculative sensibility with virtuoso command of the piano and deep assimilation of the fundamentals. A deft tune deconstructor, he commands vocabulary across a broad timeline of swinging, blues-infused hardcore jazz and spiritual jazz/avant garde jazz dialects, as well as the Euro-canon, and conveys his stories with the intuitive spontaneity of an ear player. He projects an instantly recognizable sound, sometimes creating flowing rubato tone poems, sometimes embodying the notion that the piano comprises 88 tuned drums. His stylistically polyglot compositions – influenced by the expansive, individuality-first Black Music culture of his native Philadelphia and by a decade playing Charles Mingus’ beyond-category music in the Mingus Big Band – similarly postulate an environment of “structured freedom” that instigates the personnel to push the envelope in all his multifarious leader and collaborative projects. These include the Eubanks Evans Experience (a recent venture w/eminent guitarist Kevin Eubanks); the recently-formed Brazilian unit Terreno Comum; Evans’ working trio with bassist Luques Curtis & drummer Mark Whitfield; Jr.; & Tar Baby (a collective trio of 20 years standing with bassist Eric Revis & drummer Nasheet Waits). One of Tar Baby’s two 2022 releases will be released on Evans’ imprint, Imani Records, which he founded in 2001 and relaunched in 2018. An influential educator, Evans is devoted to passing the torch to new generations. His students include the outstanding young alto saxophonist & Blue Note artist Immanuel Wilkins, and the prodigious, Grammy-nominated teenage pianist Brandon Goldberg.
I had the honor of spending some time with Mr. Orrin Evans ahead of his headlining set on June 15th at the University of Wisconsin Terrace as part of the 2024 Madison Jazz Festival. We first took care of business and got to know each of his bandmates for the event and how he looks forward to being able to create music with these folks in a spot he has hear a lot about as a beautiful place to play. Who could argue? Mr. Evans goes back in time and reflects on how some form of the arts was going to be a part of him always, he was never discouraged from doing things he enjoyed and wanted to try, which has seemed to translate into the way he goes about creating/leading/teaching within the arts. The question ‘What are you listening to?’ leads to some interesting words and it seems on a good day, we and many may have a certain sound in common. We talk about how his 2023 album, ‘The Red Door’ came together and how he got to work with so many folks he always wanted to on that record and why not build a setlist? Man, after that I wanna go over and hang with him and have a listening party.
