Bill Evans was born in Plainfield, NJ on August 16, 1929 to a hard-working family and had a close brother; his father had bad gambling and drinking habits; Bill began taking piano lessons soon after his brother Harry did because he started learning and memorizing what Harry was learning; he was performing for dances and weddings by the time he was in high school; he’d go on to study music at Southeastern Louisiana University with a flute scholarship; In July 1955, he enrolled at Mannes School of Music in New York after freelancing for a couple years in and out of Chicago, and also spending 3 years in the army due to the draft where he played in the army bands; while doing his postgraduate study he performed many ballroom and club gigs; after receiving his artist diploma, he worked with George Russell, also joining Miles Davis’s Sextet in 1958; in late ‘59 he left Miles and started his own trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian; they performed and recorded often until the untimely death of Scott Lafaro in 1961; Bill was devastated by the death of LaFaro and took some time off from playing (which unfortunately contributed to his heroin habit, which got worse at this time; however, he would go on to be more controlling of this bad habit after 1963 as his relationship with Ellaine Shultz continued to get more serious, with her basically acting as his wife) — Bill then used Chuck Israels on bass when he got back to playing as his trio while continuing to record and perform, also working with bassist Eddie Gomez as well starting in the late 60s, which reignited his musical spark; he’d also go on to record with the great Tony Bennett in the late 70s; By the late 70s he had kicked his heroin habit but had grown accustomed to cocaine; by this time, Elaine Schultz had committed suicide upon learning that Bill had developed a serious relationship with another woman; also, his brother Harry committed suicide by 1979, which was devastating to Bill Evans; he’d go on to die shortly after on September 15, 1980 from a combo of cirrhosis, a peptic ulcer, pneumonia and untreated hepatitis) — he’s known for a few of his major compositions, including “Waltz For Debby” and “Time Remembered” and his piano voicings (how he places the order of notes in a given chord or sound) as his approach to jazz harmony playing was influenced by Claude Debussy (impressionist composers). His versions of standards often included reharmonizations, added tone chords, substitutions and modulations.