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Gil Evans Archive

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Family archive preserving and activating the legacy of jazz arranger and orchestra leader Gil Evans.

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Found this card that a librarian that worked on the archive decades ago had made to try to wrangle Gil’s archives.

Part of my work as an archivist and librarian for the Gil Evans Archive is to carry on this process of locating Gil’s materials. After compiling and organizing his archive, the rest of his collection will go down to Washington to the Library of Congress, where the majority of his manuscripts were placed earlier this year.

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#jazz #archives #gilevans #gilevansorchestra taken in New York City by @gilevansarchive

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4 months ago

The Library of Congress has announced the acquisition of Gil Evans’ complete music manuscripts.
Spanning decades of collaboration and innovation, these scores now enter the national collection, where they will remain accessible to scholars, musicians, and the public for generations to come.
Read more at https://newsroom.loc.gov/news/library-of-congress-acquires-manuscripts-of-jazz-musician-gil-evans/s/7c052f41-51b7-49ff-9f8b-fd32639bcb60

#jazz #gilevans by @gilevansarchive

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8 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 @gilevansarchive

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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.

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#jazz #archives by @gilevansarchive

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7 days ago

Photos from the California Coast Jazz Festival honoring Miles Davis. Shown here is Gil’s son Miles Evans, Gil Evans orchestra veteran Jon Faddis, Terell Stafford, Jeremy Pelt, Gilbert Castellanos.

Thank you to the beautiful @sandrapehrsson for sharing these photos. by @gilevansarchive

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7 days ago

The @gilevansarchive has been working to preserve the legacy of famed jazz arranger Gil Evans. Known for his eponymous orchestra as well as legendary collaborations with Miles Davis, Gil Evan’s Archive recently unearthed his expansive vinyl record collection. I had so much fun working on the design and construction of these solid cherry wood display cabinets and shelves that exhibit the collection in the historic Westbeth Artist Housing.

Design: @wscworkshop
Fabrication: @wscworkshop

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#architecture #design #vinyl #jazz #gilevans by @gilevansarchive

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19 days ago

Thank you @verve_vault @ververecords for sending us the recent repressings of The Individualism of Gil Evans and Out of the Cool.

#jazz #gilevans by @gilevansarchive

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20 days ago

Thank you Rosa from @forkeepsbooks for sending over this scan of an obituary for Gil that was featured in a 1988 issue of Jazz Forum.

In this article, Miles Davis was quoted saying, “If you had a box full of uncut diamonds and threw them all in ocean the one precious jewel you’d want to keep would be Gil. That was how I felt about him. He changed everything. Until he came along, all the movie composers were writing like Ravel.”

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

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20 days 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 @gilevansarchive

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a month 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 @gilevansarchive

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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 @gilevansarchive

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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 @gilevansarchive

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a month ago