track 1. KING PORTER STOMP:
(F. Morton)

keyboards - GIL EVANS
alto saxophone solo - DAVID SANBORN
trumpet; flugelhorn; piccolo trumpet - LEW SOLOFF; ERNIE ROYAL
french horn - PETER GORDON; JOHN CLARK
french horn; synthesizer - PETER LEVIN
trombone; tuba; synthesizer - TOM MALONE
tuba - BOB STEWART
alto saxophone; flute; soprano saxophone - DAVID SANBORN
tenor saxophone; flute - GEORGE ADAMS
bass clarinet; baritone saxophone - HOWARD JOHNSON
synthesizer; organ - DAVID HOROWITZ
synthesizer - PAUL METZKE
guitar - RYO KAWASAKI
koto; percussion - HANNIBAL MARVIN PETERSON
bass - HERB BUSHLER
drums - ANTHONY WILLIAMS
tympani; congas; drums; mallet instruments; percussion - SUE EVANS
percussion; marimba - WARREN SMITH
snare drum; tabla; percussion - BRUCE DITMAS
synthesizer; steel guitar; percussion; bells - JOE GALLIVAN
arranger - GIL EVANS

in RCA's Studio B in New York
on April 11, 1975
(sweetened on) April 25, June 10 & June 12, 1975

There Comes A Time
Gil Evans

"...the CD has been re-edited and remixed under Gil Evans' direction. With soon-to-be classic solos by the likes of David Sanborn, Billy Harper, George Adams & Lew Soloff, all mixing together acoustic and electric instruments in a creative big band fusion, this is one of Gil Evans' last truly great sessions..."

RCA - BLUEBIRD
(5783)
LP cover illustration - Daniel Schwartz

Original 1975 LP Liner Notes:

________Gil Evans' career (bio) defies convention. Like his music, it's often been arranged in very personal, subtly shaded patterns. The results have been just as striking.

_____The history of jazz is full of examples of great musicians who made an impact early in their lives and then settled for a slow, gentle decline - or died young. Gil Evans, a self-taught pianist and arranger, was a late starter who discovered jazz when he was 15. Within a few years he was leading his own band, but he was 45 by the time he recorded his first album under his own name. Now, in his 70s, he leads one of the most daring big bands in jazz.

_____Unlike other major arrangers with whom his work is compared, Gil Evans has composed only a few pieces. His best writing has usually involved other people's music. And unlike most of the great bandleaders, Gil Evans is not an instrumentalist. He took up the piano professionally at the age of 40 and plays a serviceable, stripped-down style that he cheerfully shrugs off as 'cheerleader piano'.

_____His career, which spans more than 50 years, has zigzagged between short, intense, highly productive periods and sudden retreats from public view. He is an elusive figure. He has remained unconcerned about trends or establishing a niche, producing a small body of work. And yet, despite all this, perhaps because of it, Gil Evans' work is of such originality and beauty that his place among jazz's great writers and orchestrators has long been secured.

_____Born Ian Ernest Gilmore Green on May 13, 1912 in Toronto, Canada, he later took the surname of his stepfather. The family moved a number of times before finally settling in Stockton, California. He got his music schooling mainly from records and the radio.

_____"...In those days, about 1930, radio was a big thing...", he recalled not long ago. "...Every station had remote programs from ballrooms and supper clubs, so almost every day I heard all these bands like Duke Ellington, The Casa Loma Band and Claude Hopkins...". He bought their records and, no small feat for someone who "...just fooled around with the piano in certain places I lived...", transcribed the arrangements. "...It was hard and it took a lot of time but I didn't care...", he said "...I loved it...".

_____He also remembers buying "...every Louis Armstrong record ever made between 1927 and 1936. Actually I learned music from Louis Armstrong...", He said, "...I learned to love music, to love songs. He made a lot of records, and a lot of them had dog songs, second-rate songs; parts of them were terrible, with stock orchestrations. And the rhythm sections...", he said, shaking his head slowly, his voice trailing off. "...But in every one of those three-minute records there's a magic moment. In every one of them...".

_____He organized his first group in Stockton in 1933 and later, in 1937, he formed a band to work at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa Beach. A year later, singer Skinnay Ennis took over the band and Gil Evans stayed as music director. In 1941, he joined the Claude Thornhill band writing arrangements.

_____Featuring French horns and, later, a tuba along with the customary dance band instrumentation, the band had a distinctive, sophisticated sound, and Claude Thornhill's arranging style, especially his orchestration, influenced Gil Evans greatly. Just as the band seemed ready to prosper, Claude Thornhill joined the Navy and soon after Gil Evans left for a three year stint in the US Army.

_____In 1946, fresh out of the service, Gil Evans moved to New York to, as he puts it, "...meet all my heroes..." of the bebop revolution and to rejoin Claude Thornhill's band.

_____His place on 55th street became a mixture of jazz salon, graduate school and home for a long list of regulars that included Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis (bio), George Russell, John Lewis and Johnny Carisi. "...It was one big room in a basement, that's all...", Gil Evans recalled. "...it had a piano and a bed and a record player. That's all there was in the place - and a sink. I rented the place and left the door open two years. I never knew who was going to be there when I got home. I didn't care...". Johnny Carisi recently recalled that "...there was a parade going on at all hours. Guys coming and going, quietly, and a lot of record playing and a lot of talking about music...".

_____In 1948, Gil Evans resigned from the Claude Thornhill band, frustrated with the band's increasingly somber sound. Later that year, much of what was discussed at Gil Evans' apartment crystallized with the formation of Miles Davis' nonet, which was, in effect, a small version of Claude Thornhill's band. "...We just reduced it down to the minimum number of players to cover the harmony...", Gil Evans explained. The three recordings that followed the first in January 1949, the last in March 1950 - became collectively known as the "Birth Of The Cool".

_____In the years that followed, Gil Evans worked as a freelance arranger, orchestrating music for radio and TV shows and writing for singers such as Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Pearl Bailey and Helen Merrill. Then, in 1956, Gil Evans reunited with Miles Davis. The first product of their collaboration was Gil Evans' uncredited arrangement of " 'Round Midnight" for Miles Davis' quintet. Soon after they set out to work on a project involving Miles Davis and a large ensemble, which in time led to three gems on which a large share of Gil Evans' reputation rests: "Miles Ahead" (1957), "Porgy and Bess" (1959) and "Sketches of Spain" (1960).

_____In those years Gil Evans also recorded his first album as a bandleader, "Big Stuff" (1957) for Prestige®, which was soon followed by two collections of jazz classics, "New Bottle, Old Wine" (1958) featuring Cannonball Adderley (bio) and "Great Jazz Standards" (1959).

_____These six albums represent a remarkable body of work. Stylistically it ranges from Tin Pan Alley and W.C. Handy to Kurt Weill and flamenco music, and, although they were conceived within three years, each work has a distinctive personality. Also, they clearly established Gil Evans as a subtle orchestrator with a knack for creating exquisite settings for soloists. In Gil Evans' hands, arranging becomes recomposition.

_____The sixties were years of sharp contrast: strong albums followed by periods of sporadic work and unfinished projects. In early 1960, after the longest engagement of his career, at the Jazz Gallery in New York City ("...We worked six weeks, six days a week - the most I've ever worked before and since...") Evans took his band into the recording studio. The resulting "Out Of The Cool" in its sound and blend of writing and spontaneous organization, was a clean break from his previous work on record.

_____He also collaborated with Miles Davis on music for a play that never reached Broadway, changed record labels, and released "The Individualism of Gil Evans" (1963). He arranged for Kenny Burrell and Astrud Gilberto and, in 1968, won a Guggenheim Fellowship in composition.

_____In the 1970s Gil Evans embraced electronics (using synthesizers for the first time in 1971 in the sessions for his "Where Flamingos Fly") and rock (as in his 1973 "Svengali") with mixed success. He also discovered a "very good songwriter" named Jimi Hendrix and planned a collaboration which evaporated after the guitarist's death.

_____Gil Evans later recorded a set of his arrangements of Jimi Hendrix's compositions ("The Gil Evans Orchestra Plays Jimi Hendrix") and it has since been customary for Gil Evans to include in his shows at least one Jimi Hendrix composition.

_____"There Comes A Time", recorded in 1975, is Gil Evans' most fully realized statement from the 1970s. It is also his most recent studio album.

_____It glances back to tradition and his own career (there are updatings of old arrangements such as "King Porter Stomp", once a showcase for Cannonball Adderley) and also offers a deftly drawn sketch of the sound and freer structures that were to come.

_____The instrumentation features an unorthodox mix that includes as many as five synthesizers and five percussionists. The playing is direct, full of highly dramatic turns. And in sharp contrast with Gil Evans' earlier taste for pastel shadings and subtle rhythmic crosscurrents, the colors are bright, the beat clearly enunciated.

_____Twelve years is a lifetime in jazz, but Gil Evans' work ages like fine brandy. "There Comes A Time" is a portrait of a man in motion, ageless. (...original 1974 LP liner notes from Fernarndo Gonzales...)

CD REISSUE REFLECTIONS:
_____The listener is no doubt curious about the reasons for making changes in an album which has existed in its originally-released form for a dozen years.

_____It's a wise idea to discuss reissues with living artists, not only out of the courtesy due them (after all, if it's worth reissuing, one assumes that the original album had a high degree of validity), but to make sure that the album that came out did, in fact, reflect the artist's point of view (not necessarily always the case). Second, applicable especially in this case, is the fact that the artist acted as producer of the original release, so we are dealing with a double dose of responsibility. Besides that, Gil Evans' contributions to so many parts of the history of American music (no - that's more than a little narrow - by any standards he belongs to the traditions of all the planet's music) mean that to change anything implies consultation with and consideration of this artist / composer / arranger / producers / influential force's intent and wishes.

_____The passage of a considerable amount of time provided Mr. Evans with the opportunity to reconsider several elements of his work. The technical necessity to switch from an analog format (in which the original album was originally recorded) to a digital one (for Compact Disc manufacture) meant that more time would be available - a CD can hold something like three quarters again as much music as an LP. Additionally, digital methodology is more tolerant of a wider dynamic range, and the technology which has become available since this material was first recorded made it possible to reduce much of both noise and tape hiss on the original tracks, further clarifying the music.

_____At the artist/producer's request, the original multitrack recordings were remixed to digital tape, since, again, the passage of time had led Mr. Evans to a rather different view of the sound- and part-relationships of much of his work. In terms of content, there have also been substantial changes. "Little Wing", from the original album, has been saved for inclusion in Mr. Evans' compilation of the music of Jimi Hendrix, which is scheduled for future Compact Disc release. "Aftermath: The Fourth Movement - Children Of The Fire" does not appear here. Short portions of "There Comes A Time" have been deleted. "The Meaning Of The Blues", just under six minutes' worth of music on the original album, has flowered to 20 minutes here. "Joy Spring", "So Long" and "Buzzard Variation" are all previously unreleased tracks.

_____Gil Evans is a powerful aesthetic force. He doesn't move quickly or hastily. Rather like a glacier, he can't be hurried or pushed, and his passage profoundly shapes the terrain through which he passes. I had looked forward to working with a musical intelligence and force which I viewed as Mozartean. Wrong again. Working for Gil Evans is like pumping the organ - bellows for Bach. (...CD re-issue liner notes from Ed Michel...)

Gil Evans: a bio

_____Gil Evans was born in Toronto on May 13th, 1912 and died in Cuernavaca, Mexico on March 20th, 1988.

_____One of the most significant arrangers in jazz history, Gil Evans' three album-length collaborations with Miles Davis ("Miles Ahead", "Porgy and Bess" and "Sketches of Spain") are all considered classics. Gil Evans had a lengthy and wide-ranging career that sometimes ran parallel to the trumpeter.

_____Like Miles Davis, Gil Evans became involved in utilizing electronics in the 1970s and preferred not to look back and recreate the past. He led his own band in California (1933-38) which eventually became the backup group for Skinnay Ennis; Gil Evans stayed on for a time as arranger. He gained recognition for his somewhat futuristic charts for Claude Thornhill's Orchestra (1941-42 and 1946-48) which took advantage of the ensemble's cool tones, utilized French horns and a tuba as frontline instruments and by 1946 incorporated the influence of bop. He met Miles Davis (who admired his work with Claude Thornhill) during this time and contributed arrangements of "Moon Dreams" and "Boplicity" to Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool" nonet.

_____After a period in obscurity, Gil Evans wrote for a Helen Merrill session and then collaborated with Miles Davis on "Miles Ahead". In addition to his work with Miles Davis (which also included a 1961 recorded Carnegie Hall concert and the half-album "Quiet Nights"), Gil Evans recorded several superb and highly original sets as a leader (including "Gil Evans and Ten", "New Bottle Old Wine" and "Great Jazz Standards") during the era.

_____In the 1960s among the albums he worked on for other artists were notable efforts with Kenny Burrell and Astrud Gilberto. After his own sessions for Verve® during 1963-64, Gil Evans waited until 1969 until recording again as a leader. That year's "Blues in Orbit" was his first successful effort at combining acoustic and electric instruments; it would be followed by dates for Artists House®, Atlantic® (Svengali®) and a notable tribute to Jimi Hendrix in 1974. After 1975's "There Comes a Time" (which features among its sidemen David Sanborn), most of Gil Evans' recordings were taken from live performances. Starting in 1970 he began playing with his large ensemble on a weekly basis in New York clubs. Filled with such all-star players as George Adams, Lew Soloff, Marvin "Hannibal" Peterson, Chris Hunter, Howard Johnson, Pete Levin, Hiram Bullock, Hamiet Bluiett and Arthur Blythe among others, Gil Evans' later bands were top-heavy in talent but tended to ramble on too long. Gil Evans, other than sketching out a framework and contributing his keyboard, seemed to let the orchestra largely run itself, inspiring rather than closely directing the music. There were some worthwhile recordings from the 1980s (when the band had a long string of Monday night gigs at Sweet Basil in New York) but in general they do not often live up to their potential. Prior to his death, Gil Evans recorded with his "arranger's piano" on duets with Lee Konitz and Steve Lacy and his body of work on a whole ranks with the top jazz arrangers. (...from Scott Yanow...)

Miles Davis: a bio

_____Jazz legend Miles Davis was born on May 25, 1926 in Alton, Illinois to a middle-class family that moved to East St. Louis, Illinois when he was a child. By the age of 10 Davis was playing trumpet, later performing in his high school band and several local jazz groups. When he was 18, Davis traveled to New York to study at the Julliard School of Music, but soon dropped out to hang out in the city's burgeoning jazz scene. Getting his start with Coleman Hawkins and Rubberlegs Williams, Davis soon joined Charlie Parker on several of late '40s albums in New York and California. In 1948 Davis started his own nine-pieceband, a highly-influential group considered a pioneering force in West Coast "cool jazz." After recording the 1949 classic "Birth of the Cool", Davis left the band (which continued on without him) to perform at the Paris Jazz Festival and work with other musicians.

_____During the early 1950s Miles Davis struggled with heroin, releasing a series of erratic "hard bop" albums which varied from solid to highly disappointing. By 1955 he had quit the drug, signed to Columbia, and launched a comeback with an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival. Forming a new quintet with saxophonist John Coltrane, Davis released several classic albums during the mid-'50s before the group broke apart. He then went on to collaborate with Gil Evans on several albums in which he experimented with flugelhorn in addition to trumpet before forming a new sextet in 1958 with John Coltrane (tenor sax), Cannonball Adderley (alto sax), Bill Evans (piano), Paul Chambers (bass) and Philly Joe Jones (drums). This group became Davis's classic backing band, recording groundbreaking albums such as 1958's "Milestones" and 1959's "Kind of Blue", which introduced modal improvisation to jazz.

_____The group slowly drifted apart during the early '60s. In 1964 Davis formed a new, more experimental quintet, featuring pianist Herbie Hancock, among others. The group slowly changed as members came and went, drifting from more traditional jazz to avant-garde material and later funky, keyboard-driven fusion, embodied by the 1969 jazz-rock masterpiece "Bitches Brew". During the early '70s Davis's output tended towards more accessible, jazz-rock material whose guitars, keyboards and studio effects turned off many jazz critics and traditionalists.

_____In 1975 Miles Davis, in poor health due to years of drug and alcohol abuse, abruptly announced his retirement. Six years later he returned with a new band whose funky pop arrangements continued to alienate critics while winning over new fans. Throughout the '80s Davis toured and recorded, finally passing away in September 1991 at the age of 65, leaving behind a huge body of work which left a permanent mark on the world of jazz and music in general and continues to captivate listeners to this day. (...from Down Beat^® magazine...)

Cannonball Adderley: a bio

_____Known for his swinging and sanctified alto sax improvisations, Cannonball Adderley was a central figure in modern jazz, from his historic stints with Miles Davis to the marvelous combos he co-led with his brother, cornetist Nat Adderley. His engaging monologues and stage manner, a mixture of urbane hipness and southern-tinged vernacular, made him a favourite with jazz fans and enabled him to transcend musical categories. Adderley's talents caught the attention of Miles Davis, and the trumpeter included him in his sextets, which also featured John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones, from 1957 to 1959. That groundbreaking group recorded several classics for the Columbia label including "Milestones" and "Monk And Miles At Newport". In 1959, Cannonball Adderley also played on Miles Davis' legendary LP, "Kind Of Blue", and Mile Davis guest-starred as a sideman on Cannonball Adderley's excellent Blue Note date "Something Else" that same year. Cannonball Adderley recorded with a number of other major jazz artists as well, including John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Milt Jackson and Nancy Wilson.

_____With his own groups with his brother, Cannonball Adderley continued his Afro-rooted approach to jazz; and several of his sideman, including Charles Lloyd, George Duke, Louis Hayes and Joe Zawinul, went on to become stars in their own right. The addition of Zawinul was important because he wrote the 1963 soul-jazz hit "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" which also highlighted the electric piano in a jazz context. Adderley's other well-known compositions include "Jive Samba" and "The Country Preacher". The majority of his work as a leader appeared on the Riverside and Capitol labels. He died of a stroke on tour in Gary, Indiana, on Aug. 8, 1975.

...from Down Beat magazine.

OnλinerNotes - JAZZ
Windsor - Canada
MMIII