Gil Evans And His Orchestra

Gil Evans died in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on March 20, 1988. Four months later the orchestra he had led since the early 1980s, the band of the Monday nights at Sweet Basil in Greenwich Village, went ahead with its summer dates in Italy without him. Tribute To Gil collects performances from those concerts, given between July 8 and July 24, 1988 at Umbria Jazz and at a festival in Sicily. Soul Note released it in 1989 under the name of The Gil Evans Orchestra, and the family was part of it. His son Miles Evans plays trumpet, his widow Anita Evans percussion and voice, and his son Noah handled the technical direction.

The core of the band is the New York orchestra: Lew Soloff and Hannibal Marvin Peterson on trumpet, Chris Hunter and Alex Foster on saxophones, Dave Bargeron, Tom Malone and David Taylor in the low brass, Pete Levin on synthesizer, Mark Egan on electric bass and Danny Gottlieb on drums, with Gil Goldstein at the piano. For the Italian dates they were joined by guitarist Biréli Lagrène, violinist Michał Urbaniak and singer Urszula Dudziak, who uses her voice with electronics. Two long performances carry the album. Orgone, introduced by a four-minute Prelude To Orgone, runs for over fifteen minutes, and London for sixteen and a half. Duet lasts seven minutes, and two brief pieces, Moonstruck One and the one-minute Eleven, complete the set. The liner notes are by Stephanie Stein Crease.

This is the original Soul Note CD, catalogue number 121 209-2, released in 1989.