"Jazz, as we we tend to look at it, is a style. But I feel that jazz is not so much a style as a process of making music. It’s the process of making one minute’s music in one minute’s time. Whereas when you compose, you could make one minute of music and take three months to compose one minute's music. Now that’s the only basic difference".
Bill Evans from the documentary "The Universal Mind of Bill Evans”.Question was what’s the difference between jazz and classical music
"I think having one's own sound in a sense is the most fundamental kind of identity in music. But it's a very touchy thing how one arrives at that. It has to be something that comes from inside, and it's a long-term process. It's a product of a total personality.
I think sometimes the people I seem to like most as musical artists, are the late arrivers, the ones who have had to work a lot harder in a sense to get facility, to get fluency. Whereas you see a lot of young talents that have a great deal of fluidity and fluency and facility, and they never really carry it anyplace. Because in a way they're not aware enough of what they're doing."
Bill Evans interview 1980
"I always like people who have developed long and hard, particularly through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think that what they arrive at is, usually, deeper and more beautiful than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning.
I say this because it's a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to.
You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don't have that ability. I didn't. I had to know what I was doing and ultimately it turned out that these people weren't able to carry their thing very far.
I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians.
I believe in things that are developed through hard work."
- Bill Evans
I hear far too many solos noodling with great dexterity through the chord changes...but they don't seem to be listening to their inner ear. They're not inside the tune.
It's like all the cats with virtuoso chops playing all over their horn. And I think, if I could play like that, I wouldn't play like that.
Time remembered: Bill Evans Documentary
“I had to work harder at music than most cats, because you see, man, I don’t have very much talent. Everybody talks about my harmonic conception. I worked very hard at that because I didn’t have very good ears.”
Bill Evans on his musical development.