Bill Evans

I think it was 2006 or so. I just got into graduate school and I remember I had a bunch of free time to myself. At that time Chinese internet was just coming of age with not so sophisticated copy-right regulations and people’s mindset for that matter. As a result, it was pretty easy to scavenge anything out of the internet, as long as you know your ways around things. Good, bad, domestic or foreign. I remember within a couple days of release you will be able to play any Call of Duty games. It was a pretty fun time .

For most of my peers it was all about movies and games. For me, my favorite things to get were music. Western music in particular. I grew up with Grunge years even though I’m one pacific ocean away from Seattle. But I listen to anything I can find growing up in my junior and high schools. I remember saving the money my Mom gave me for breakfast and spending it on cassettes with beautiful and mysterious album art, left rarely visited on that one corner shelf in one of the record stores on my way back home. People working in those record stores are not really music fans or experts. They don’t know much about the music beyond Hongkongese or Taiwanese musicians. For them this was merely a business or job. However for me, that 10 minutes of time I stopped by that store was the happiest time of day. Listening to music was my outlet. I loved sneaking them home in my bookbag, listening to cassettes rolling before I go to bed, studying the lyrics and finding information about Nirvana, Radioheads, Pearl Jam. It was my whole awkward teenage world.

Fast-foward to 2006, I started to see some Jazz albums popping up from one of the pirate sites. Out of curiosity I started to download and try a couple of them out. Years later in retrospect, I think I was pretty lucky to have “Waltz for Debby” - Bill Evans to be one of the early albums that I tried.

I’m not remembering my first listen in particular. But I remember I grew tremendously hooked to the Waltz for Debby album after that. I would listen to it on my MP3 player on repeat. It was like a hypnosis spell on my head that I can’t get rid of. To the point where I think the sound of Bill’s piano would grow on me and the sounds would just be playing in my head when I am not even having my ear-plugs on.

I was wholeheartedly captured by it. I think the word that always came out when I tried to read it or understand it was “Atmosphere”. It was not one piece, one section or one note. It’s the whole landscape it painted. I was not a musician so I couldn’t put into exact musicology terms to pinpoint its techniques or applied theories. I just remember being metaphysically taken out to other spaces. Spaces where I’m not familiar but wonderfully acceptable and, for the lack of words, cool.

Later I would learn that the album is a collection of pieces that the Bill Evans Trio played across three sets at Village Vanguard, a famous Jazz bar in Greenwich Village New York. The recording was so good I can hear the closeness between the band and audience, the inaudible small chit-chats, the pinch of fingers on cigarettes, and of course, Bill’s touches on those magical black and whte notes.

Bill was sincere. That’s not usually how I would describe a musician. Years of learning and practices, grinding and perfecting one’s craft. I believe only when you achieve the highest craft can the product be received as sincere. The connection that pierced across time space and culture and language, is palpable and strong.

Earlier I was saying I was lucky to have Bill Evans coming into my life. I think in a sense it occurred to me at the right time. I was in my late college years. I was still awkward, reserved and timid. Not that I was an introverted type with no one to talk to. I think I was timid because I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t confident in anything. I had interests and my strong suits but I wasn’t sure I could live off that. In a way Bill’s music gave me a sign, a pat on the shoulder if you will, that it’s OK to be just me. To be a lone outsider, you don’t need recognition, acknowledgement or even companionship.

Life is ultimately you and yourself. The emphatic boundary is still there and it can never break and will never break. It’s sad. But sorta beautiful. I think from music I learned to be alone. Bill taught me that.

Another gift Bill gave me is the ability to pause time. At least I can feel it when I start to get into his music. Stopping the time, for the brief of a moment I wasn’t thinking about anything. Bill took me away from the rest of the mess and choas. In the stopped time, I know I was living. I know I was granted the body and spirit to enjoy all these. What left to do other than sit down and listen?