In the light of the last 30 years or so, Gil Evans’s notion of innovation as embodied here seems rather quaint. An accident of history – today’s fad for retro sounds – makes La Nevada, a modal groove modestly enlivened by riffs and solos, sound fresher than it might have 10 years ago, but this illusion only thinly disguises the music’s antiquity. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that Out Of The Cool didn’t sound dated when it was first issued. Indubitably Evans contrived some novel combinations, here and elsewhere around this time, but the constituent elements – old blues riffs, classical instrumentation and rather blunt atonality – were common practice by 1960, albeit in differing areas.
That wouldn’t be so much of a problem if Evans’s application of these ingredients didn’t seem to be governed more by some programmatic agenda than musical intuition. Where other jazz musicians of the period adopted classical vocabulary to jazz ends, Evans seems to be applying classical procedure to jazz, and the result is stiff, formalised and mannered, the vernacular elements (blues, Latin percussion) emasculated except in one or two solo moments. Moods are created, gestures made, but a survey of the details reveals a handful of flimsy, overworked melodic motifs given watery colour by predictable instrumental and rhythmic variations.
And while Evans might have been a master of the harmony he used, the music is perpetually wanting in that department – there just isn’t much of it. Indeed, Tom Stewart’s sleeve-note observation that Gil Evans avoids overwriting seems to be an understatement. It’s the absence of composerly structure in La Nevada which results in poorly contrasted jamming. Finally, one is left with the impression of music which takes itself rather seriously but lacks the substance to support the posture it adopts.
Discography
La Nevada; Where Flamingos Fly; Bilbao Song; Stratus-phunk; Sunken Treasure; Sister Sadie (44.19)
Collective personnel: Gil Evans (p, arr, cond); John Coles, Phil Sunkel (t); Keg Johnson, Jimmy Knepper (tb); Tony Studd (btb); Bill Barber (tu); Ray Beckenstein, Eddie Caine (as, f, picc); Budd Johnson (ts, ss); Bob Tricario (bn, f, picc); Ray Crawford (elg); Ron Carter (b); Charlie Persip, Elvin Jones (d). New Jersey, November 18 & 30 and December 10 & 15, 1960.
(Impulse IMP 11862)
