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felipamonterro

@felipamonterro

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Archivist, researcher, steward
@gilevansarchive

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Extremely happy to share that the sheet music of my step grandfather, jazz arranger and orchestra leader Gil Evans, has been acquired by the Library of Congress.

Five years ago I initiated the process of placing his archive with an institution so that his work could be preserved and made accessible to researchers for generations to come.

I am deeply grateful to my stepfather, Noah Evans, for bringing me into this work of stewardship. Growing up there was often the hum of jazz in our home as he transferred his father’s tapes in the living room.

The preservation of this archive is a meaningful win for jazz history and for American cultural history more broadly. Gil Evans’s legacy is not only his own, but also part of the histories of the many artists and creators he collaborated with, from Miles Davis, for whom he arranged works such as Sketches of Spain and Porgy and Bess, to Astrud Gilberto on Look to the Rainbow, to filmmakers like Martin Scorsese for The Color of Money, as well as the many hip hop producers who have sampled his music.

I am deeply honored to have played a role in securing his legacy within the historical record and I look forward to the ongoing work of preserving and activating his archive. If you’d like to keep up with the work we are doing please follow the @gilevansarchive page.

In this post is my favorite song he arranged for Astrud Gilberto, named after a musical bow from Angola that is used in Brazil in Candomblé and Capoeira. I also included materials I’ve found in my family archive and the last slide is something I found while digitizing materials at the Schomburg a few years back. by @felipamonterro

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9 months ago

Gil Evans Archive work update: Talks and performances at the Library of Congress, NYFA fiscal sponsorship, record research and storage

Pictured is a test pressing from Gil’s 1965 sessions at Verve for the Individualism of Gil Evans which was recently repressed by @verve_vault.

Over the past few months I’ve been going through Gil’s extensive record collection identifying significant recordings and inscriptions. Among my discoveries have been records that informed his arrangements for Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain and Astrud Gilberto’s Look to the Rainbow. I also found a personal note from Dave Brubeck complimenting Gil’s arrangement of his composition of “The Duke” for Miles Davis in Miles Ahead. While sifting through the records I also found photos of Gil sent by the White House.

I recently had a custom record storage and display installed in the apartment which has been an exciting step toward organizing the collection. Thank you @wscworkshop for your wonderful work.

We also secured fiscal sponsorship through the New York Foundation for the Arts, allowing us to fundraise for the continued preservation and processing of the archive, as well as an oral history initiative documenting Gil’s life and work through the memories of those who knew and collaborated with him.

In November, the Library of Congress will be celebrating Miles Davis’s centennial with a concert and study day.

On November 6, the Library will present Unlimited Miles: John Beasley’s Miles Davis at 100, a concert drawing inspiration in part from Gil’s manuscripts, which were acquired by the Library earlier this year.

On November 7, the Library will host a presentation titled Davis and Evans: A Creative Partnership, exploring their creative relationship through Gil’s original manuscripts for Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain.

It’s especially meaningful to see these materials being preserved, studied, played and celebrated. I’m grateful to have a role in preserving this important piece of 20th century American music history.

Thank you @svhatelier for taking this photo and all your help.

#jazz #archives #milesdavis #gilevans #musichistory by @felipamonterro

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4 days ago

Alfonia Tims, a guitar player that briefly lived at Gil’s apartment. He would give his sons bass lessons. His son recounted that if they did the technical stuff he’d teach them Jimi Hendrix tunes. He unfortunately passed away young as he had an enlarged heart.

@gilevansarchive

#jazz #archives by @felipamonterro

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6 days ago

A poem by Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) from 1963. Found during my time working at the Schomburg. by @felipamonterro

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15 days ago

Took a trip to Queens to visit the @louisarmstronghouse for the opening of their Armstrong in Ghana exhibit. Grateful to all the stewards of jazz history. taken in Louis Armstrong House Museum by @felipamonterro

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16 days ago

Found several George Russell albums signed to Gil Evans in the collection.

George Russell was one of the musicians who frequented Gil’s West 55th Street apartment, along with Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, John Lewis, Charlie Parker and others. The apartment, unfortunately demolished in recent years, was where many of the ideas and relationships that became Birth of the Cool emerged.

In Stephanie Stein Crease’s biography of Gil, George Russell described the atmosphere of the apartment:

“It was like an esoteric school and Gil was the school master. The key thing to come out of it was that we were all encouraged to reach for the impossible... One would be lucky to see things through Gil’s eyes.”

#jazz #musichistory #vinyl #archives #georgerussel by @felipamonterro

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a month ago

Found this today in Gil’s collection: the New York Art Quartet’s 1965 album featuring Roswell Rudd, John Tchicai, Lewis Worrell and Milford Graves. LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) also appears, reciting his controversial poem Black Dada Nihilismus. Such a special find.

In researching this, I found that Baraka wrote about Gil in Blues People and later discussed Into the Hot in Black Music. Into the Hot was released under Gil’s name but the music was written by Cecil Taylor and John Carisi. Gil had given them his remaining Impulse! studio dates using his position to create space for their avant garde work.

#vinyl #archives #musichistory #jazz by @felipamonterro

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a month ago

As I’ve been going through Gil Evans’s records looking for inscriptions and other notable LPs, I found this John Cage record with what appears to be “stereo” written on the cover.
 This sent me down a rabbit hole finding out Gil’s connection to Cage and who may have written the inscription. Perhaps it was George Avakian, the producer for Columbia that had financed and produced this album for Cage and also had signed Miles Davis to Columbia in 1955.

Gil had introduced Miles to John Cages music many years before in 1940s in the 55th street apartment where many of the ideas in Birth of the Cool were developed.

It’s an interesting object to find in the archive given the many points of overlap between Gil’s world and experimental music. Gil and John Cage were both early advisory board members of the Creative Music Studio, founded by Karl Berger, Ingrid Sertso and Ornette Coleman. The advisory board also included figures such as George Russell, Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, and Gunther Schuller.

The CMS Archive is now held at Columbia University

#gilevans #experimentalmusic #vinyl #musichistory #archives by @felipamonterro

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a month ago

Bells found in the Gil Evans archive today. Always finding interesting items.

#jazz #gilevans #archives #musichistory taken in West Village, NYC by @felipamonterro

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a month ago

Had the honor of listening to Birth of the Cool with the legendary drummer Lenny White at The Pocket Jazz Club. Known for his contributions to jazz fusion, Lenny played drums on Bitches Brew, in the band Return to Forever and also played in the Gil Evans Orchestra. Gil’s son, my stepfather, told me that his hard core band’s drummer favorite drummer was Lenny.

It was very special to spend the evening celebrating Miles and Gil with such a legendary cat. Forever grateful to carry on this lineage.

Thank you to @thepocketnyc and @gilevansproject

#jazz #musichistory taken in The Pocket Jazz Club by @felipamonterro

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2 months ago

Another great find while sorting through Gil’s vinyl collection: one of the original Spanish folk music records that helped inspire Miles Davis and Gil Evans’s 1960 album Sketches of Spain.

Gil circled several songs on the album, including “Saeta,” which later appeared on Sketches of Spain.

In the book, Gil Evans: Out of the Cool: His Life and Music, Gil is recorded to have said, “[We] hadn’t intended to make a Spanish album. We were just going to do the Concierto de Aranjuez. A friend of Miles gave him the only album in existence with that piece. He brought it back to New York and I copied the music off the record because there was no score. By the time we did that, we began to listen to other folk music, music played in clubs in Spain... So we learned a lot from that and it ended up being a Spanish album. The Rodrigo, the melody is so beautiful. It’s such a strong song. I was so thrilled with that.”

@milesdavis @felipamonterro

#gilevans #milesdavis #sketchesofspain #jazz #vinyl by @felipamonterro

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3 months ago

Passed by the building that Sweet Basil used to be on my way home from a jazz show. Sweet Basil is one of the many legendary jazz clubs in New York that have closed.

Sweet Basil operated from 1975 to 1999 and hosted countless greats including Sun Ra, Art Blakey, Art Farmer, Cecil Tyler and Gil Evans. For a time, Gil’s Monday Night Orchestra and Sun Ra’s Arkestra shared Monday nights.

Gil recorded four albums here: Live at Sweet Basil, Vols. 1 & 2 in 1984 and Bud and Bird and Farewell in 1986.

J Dilla later sampled tracks off these albums in his early work with Slum Village. You can here Gil’s“Prince of Darkness” on “Track 9 (002),” and “Friday the 13th” and “Snowflake Bop,”on “Beef N Dem” and “We Be Dem, Pt 1”

Since the club closed several restaurants have come and gone. People used to say that the building was cursed because nothing seemed to last.

Thank you to my @gilevansarchive partner in crime @solea.vh for documenting.

#jazz #musichistory #gilevans #jdilla taken in Manhattan, New York by @felipamonterro

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3 months ago