Peter Evans pushed the definition of jazz
There’s something illicit in the way New York trumpeter Peter Evans reminisces about how he first got into free improvisation. Starting out in the classical and traditional jazz idioms in childhood he soon enough found that he had an appetite for a different kind of improvising and like all good things it just got worse in college. You know how it goes — he met some adventurous players and started trying new things. It was only a matter of time before he was playing with junk — actual junk mind you — alongside Calgary drummer Chris Dadge.
“The last time I played with Chris was when I was doing the solo thing and I got the chance to hear his stuff every night” says Evans. “The stuff that he was doing particularly with Rachel Wadham the piano player was with tones of amplified junk and scraps of trash and it was awesome to watch. Clearly Chris is a great drummer but you see this tension between his skill as a drummer and the extremely amateurish thing of just scraping a piece of metal across the floor. I was really into that.”
Evans certainly is one for experimentation but there’s something meticulous about his playing. Critics have lauded him for his vast arsenal of highly developed extended techniques doing things on the trumpet no one thought possible.
“What draws me to this type of music is that it opens up a lot of avenues into thinking about what music can be and what music can accomplish” says Evans. “The techniques are interesting in themselves kind of. Sure there’s certain things that wouldn’t be possible — or maybe acceptable — in a regular jazz setting but people have been doing free improvised stuff for quite awhile. It opens up to interesting opportunities — a unique ensemble approach or a unique solo approach where you can really make the best out of the instrument you have or what the group of people can do.”
One collaboration that keeps him coming back is a continuation from his college days. Joining bassist Moppa Elliott also based in New York City in the group Mostly Other People Do the Killing has certainly helped keep the element of fun and experimentation at the forefront of Evans’s musical output. The self-described terrorist bebop group’s performances can resemble an aural assault where audiences can experience everything from traditional chord structures and bebop licks to white noise tape hiss and practice exercises. Evans admits that the path to the weird wonderful and slightly silly can once again be traced back to his college days.
“I met Moppa pretty much as soon as I started school” remembers Evans. “We played prototypical versions of that stuff — some more conventional and some actually way more out there. We actually co-led a group where we had these really crazy theatre pieces where we’d play the Sound of Music and Grease . We arranged them so they’d play at the same time. We wrote this mini-opera about this girl who has sex with all these octopuses in the ocean and we had to rescue her when she’s about to drown. Really silly weird stuff
“For that group we can agree that jazz is fun” he continues. “You can be serious and having fun at the same time. If I’m going to play a solo after [alto sax player Jon Irabagon] and he makes X amount of musical jokes about a certain musical topic how do I play off that? It’s constantly moving between that kind of serious and kind of joke-y thing. Which is cool because it can keep the audience on their toes as well. We launch into ‘Billy Jean’ but then the next minute it’s a 10-minute noise piece. So they don’t really know if we’re joking. I like that kind of uncertainty.”
