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Topics covered: Gil Evans / Miles Davis collaborations
(Courtesy of Steve Lajoie. Used with permission.)
Instructor: Steve Lajoie (guest speaker)
Due to copyright restrictions, recordings played during class have been removed from the audio lecture. See the following table for details on those recordings.
Recordings and Supplemental Materials
This section gives details about the recordings played during class and other referenced resources.
Recordings
The Miles Davis and Gil Evans recordings played in class were all master takes from the boxed CD set Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings. Columbia/Legacy.
In sequence as played during class:
Mentioned to students after class: there are also interesting Gil arrangments on a Helen Merrill album called Dream of You. That album was recorded in the 1950s, but Gil and Helen also did a remake of it in the 1980s, which is almost as good, and uses almost all of the same charts (although, in typical Gil fashion, he didn't have the charts anymore, so several musicians transcribed them for the session).
Readings
Primary resouce:
Lajoie, Steve. Gil Evans & Miles Davis: Historic Collaborations: An Analysis of Selected Gil Evans Works 1957 - 1962. Rottenburg, Germany: Advance Music, 2003. ISBN: 9783892210641.
A couple of biographical books have been published about Gil Evans since mine:
Crease, Stephanie Stein. Gil Evans: Out of the Cool: His Life and Music. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2001. ISBN: 9781556524257. [Preview in Google Books.]
Hicock, Larry. Castles Made of Sound: The Story of Gil Evans. New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780306809453. [Preview in Google Books.]
Neither of these books deals directly with his music, but they do have some interesting information on his personal and business activities, including the stunning revelation that he left unsigned a 1960 offer of a recording contract with Columbia Records, which might have provided him with a measure of greater financial security.