Pianist Orrin Evans is a self-made jazz powerhouse
by Michelle Nikolai

Hard bop composer and performer Orrin Evans, 28, is not a household name - yet. The New York Times has called Evans "a singular young pianist" in whose sound "you hear an adventurous mind with a refreshing aversion to clich." He placed second in the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition in 1999 and the Philadelphia native has performed with Donald Byrd, Robin Eubanks, Charles Fambrough, Roy Hargrove, Branford Marsalis, Christian McBride, Grover Washington Jr., Buster Williams and the Mingus Big Band, among others.

In 1994 Evans recorded The Orrin Evans Trio on his own Black Entertainment label. He's cut five albums with the Dutch jazz label Criss Cross, and debuted last year on U.S. based Palmetto Records with Meant to Shine. Evans will release a new live album this month, The Band - Live at the Widener on his new label, Imani Records, with J.D. Allen on tenor sax, Sam Newsome on soprano sax, Reid Anderson on bass, and Nasheet Waits on drums.

Evans has some strong opinions about the music he loves and the state of the music industry.

How did you come to play jazz?

I think you're born to play jazz but I didn't know it. My sister would play piano and my father would play certain tunes as a hobby. My mother is an opera singer, so I always heard music around the house. And I'd sit down at the piano and start banging, and I'd never play exactly what I heard. I'd start embellishing on it, but I didn't know that was jazz at that point.

I've had a band since 1990, and I've had to hustle. My wife [Dawn Warren] and I have done a lot of work on our own, and it means so much more to me that we did this together, our own production company.

Do you think you have a different point of reference because you're so young?

No, I don't think I have a different point of reference, but I think I'm okay with recognizing that point of reference. If you talk to a lot of older musicians they have the same point of reference, but you're almost told that you can't have it. Don't get me wrong, I do recognize Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis, and John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk also, but at the same time I don't have a problem recognizing Michael Jackson, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Steely Dan - and I don't think it discredits Charlie Parker to say Prince in the same sentence. They both did monumental records. I wouldn't get into the point of comparing Parker's Bird With Strings and Prince's For You record. That's stupid, but they were both groundbreaking records.

Who moves you in the jazz world, are your key influences?

Presently, a lot of artists move me, but their records don't. I probably would even include myself in that. The studio is such a restrictive environment for some people, and the budgets are so small now that you can't do what Jaco Pastorius did on his Word of Mouth record. They spent some time on those records. Now the jazz industry does not spend that much time on records. I'm doing a record with Will Calhoun (from Living Colour), and he's coming from a rock world but he's very heavily influenced by jazz. In hanging with him, you may spend a week on one track. In jazz, these records come out and they're like instant jazz, like oatmeal or grits. You go in and you have to do your record in like, three days - you're constantly thinking about studio time. I don't think it's the artists' fault that we haven't had a groundbreaking record in jazz in a long time. Lately it's like records are coming out and going away.

On the marketing of jazz:

As a young, black man, I get tired of going to gigs and seeing audiences of middle aged, white men who still live at home with their mothers, who want to come up and tell me they have my records. Don't get me wrong, it's great that they buy my records, but there's another whole other group of people that listen to this music, and I don't think the time has been spent to market to them. If you think of all the other types of music, Britney Spears and Christina A. are not just marketed in pop magazines, they're marketed all over, but jazz is only marketed in jazz magazines.

On his recent guest appearance on "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz" (the show will be broadcast on NPR in spring 2004):

Marian asked me this on her show - she said, 'I read somewhere that you play for yourself and you don't really care about the audience. I hope you don't mean that.' I do mean it, at a certain point you have to be selfish, and that's just how I feel. I am blessed to not have a job that I don't like, I like what I do, so I have to continue to play first for myself, and that's not selfishness - this is a God-given gift and I want to always make sure that when I leave the bandstand, I didn't do something that I didn't want to do. If I want to play a certain song, I hope that 50 people in the audience are touched by this song. And I pray that they are, but if they're not, I still have to play it, because this is what I'm being led to do tonight. Ninety-nine percent of the time, if you do care about yourself first you won't lose anybody.

I've been listening to [Piano Jazz] for almost 15 years, so I'm like, wow, a lot of people hear this - maybe moreso than hear my records. I'm so iffy, I play different every day - I don't mean better or worse, it just depends on which mood I'm in. I went in there, and I had a great time, and we just had some great conversation. I sat down at that piano with Marian because I worked hard to get there. The day after I did it, Alicia Keys was in there, and the day after that, Boz Skaggs.

We played some jazz standards, the Cole Porter tune "I Love You," we worked it out together. I had an older record of hers where she played "Killing Me Softly," so I asked her to play that, and she just did a wonderful version of that by herself. She just had fun with it, went through all the keys and she improvised on the melody a lot, not like taking a solo. She put her stamp on it.

On his upcoming electric release for the Palmetto label (Winter 2004):

There isn't anything new [in jazz], there are only 12 notes on the piano in the first place, and it's not new, it's just neat. It's my music, the music I grew up with, Norman Connors and Quincy Jones, and a lot of the R&B I grew up listening to - at that time, R&B was more jazz-influenced. The only reason it's new is that people have never heard this side of me. When everybody says I'm doing something really different, okay - no one's doing anything really different. And that's okay. It's only different because you're doing it, the artist is doing it.

I used to listen to a lot of Steely Dan. So I'll hear some Steely Dan that come through it, the only difference is now I'm playing it, so it's my approach on some of the things I may have heard Steely Dan do. But it's not quite what Steely Dan did, it's not quite what Quincy Jones did with the Body Heat record, it's not exactly what Michael Jackson did on Off the Wall. But you can hear elements of it.

On writing for musicians vs. writing for the 'common' people:

The one thing that I hope to get from all music, I want to feel it. It's great if I have to think, but so many other things in my life I have to think about (laughs). There's a time I want to sit down and go, okay, what are [other musicians] trying to say conceptually, and really think about the music. But there's other times I just want to sit down and feel the music, and just have a good time. It's the same when you're writing, sometimes I sit down and write and I think, okay, this song is for musicians because I'm thinking of all these different theoretical elements. Another time I'll sit down and write, and I think this song is for the common people. They just want a nice song, period. What I hope to achieve one day is do both in one concert and have everybody leave happy.