One other person I’ve recently been inspired by is Barry Harris. An interesting aspect of this is that Barry Harris has on more than one occasion spoken against Bill Evans and modal jazz in general.

However in my view, they agree in fundamental ways. Specifically I believe

  • Harris shares the view on “jazz as process” and “jazz as part of broader tradition of improvised music” expressed by Bill Evans in the previous post.
  • Harris mentions Horowitz performing a Chopin Mazurka (“Boy.. that mazurka could be a jazz standard!..”), and indeed one can hear clear parallels between it and Evans’ music.
  • Harris on Bach and Chopin and how ‘they’ stopped teaching improvisation.
    • Also (same link) mentions the need to know the “basics” – full agreement with Bill Evans’ notion of “better to play within simple framework, but have control, than to play something complicated and lack control” (source)

Heck, to bring it back to the broader tradition, even Miles Davis (a leading proponent of modal jazz) “got it from Rachmaninoff”.