Orrin Evans

Born in Trenton, New Jersey, pianist Orrin Evans moved as a kid to Philadelphia in the mid-’80s, when the city’s pool of young talent was as rich as ever, but the established veterans still ruled the roost at places like Ortlieb’s Jazz Haus. A product of Girard Academic Music Program (GAMP) and Martin Luther King High School, Evans was just a few years behind the future headliners over at CAPA (Philly’s Creative and Performing Arts High School) like Christian McBride, Joey DeFrancesco, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and The Roots’ Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter. “I was a few years younger and I was extremely intimidated by all of them, honestly,” Evans told JazzTimes in 2018. “I was super-duper quiet around them, but it was very interesting to sit around and hear them talking…to be around people with opinions—and the facts to back up those opinions.” Evans’ education continued at Ortlieb’s, where the older jazz cognoscenti like Shirley Scott, Mickey Roker, Arthur Harper, Sid Simmons, and Bootsie Barnes held sway and served as mentors. Evans, along with a murderers’ row of Ortlieb’s alums, appears on the 2000 double-album, Live at Ortlieb’s Jazz Haus. By that time, Evans, after studying at Rutgers under another Philadelphian, Kenny Barron, was becoming a known quantity. By 1996, Barron had moved to New York City, released his debut, 1995’s The Trio, and toured Europe with saxophonist and former Jazz Messenger Bobby Watson. He’d worked as a sideman on albums led by big names with Philly ties like drummer and former Jazz Messenger Ralph Peterson and trumpeter Duane Eubanks, and Peterson (1998’s Captain Black and Grown Folk Bizness) and Eubanks (1999’s Listen to the Band) returned the favor. Listen to the Band marked the first recorded collaboration between Evans and bassist Reid Anderson, best known as a founding member of The Bad Plus (TBP), the genre-expanding trio that tapped Evans as Ethan Iverson’s replacement in 2017. Evans and Anderson have known each other since the former was an 11th grader looking for a bassist to play his sister’s graduation party and the latter was a student at Philly’s renowned Curtis Institute of Music who came enthusiastically recommended by Lovett Hines, director of the Philadelphia Clef Club. The friendship between Evans and Anderson grew from there, both personally and professionally—Anderson would be a groomsman at Evans’ wedding, and would play on Evans’ 2004 live recording, Live at Widener University. Fourteen years later, they’d be back playing together as The Bad Plus. In the meantime, Evans would release well over a dozen more albums as a leader or co-leader, including four sessions each with his Grammy-nominated Captain Black Big Band (CBBB)—the most recent being 2020’s The Intangible Between—and Tarbaby, the group collectively led by Evans, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Nasheet Waits—their most recent being 2013’s Ballad of Sam Langford, which featured saxophonist Oliver Lake and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. When, in 2017, it was announced that Evans would become the new occupant of The Bad Plus’s piano chair, much was made about how TBP’s trademark chemistry would be affected by replacing Iverson, the only pianist the group had had in their 17-year history. But, to riff on a tune from TBP’s latest album, 2019’s Activate Infinity, Evans has dovetailed beautifully, adding, both deftly and deferentially, his own brand of hard-bop dynamism to the band’s last two critically acclaimed releases. From putting together a big band from whole cloth to becoming the new guy in a well-established band, Evans has never shied away from taking a leap into the musical unknown. So, perhaps, he’s as well suited as any to tackle gigs in this “new reality” of 2020. A little home cooking helps, though, too. Evans has been livestreaming from Philly’s Chris’ Jazz Café, a venue that, like Ortlieb’s, has special meaning because it’s where the CBBB played its earliest gigs after forming in 2009. So far, these livestreamed quartet gigs, with rotating bassists and drummers, have showcased saxophonists Chris Potter and Immanuel Wilkins; right after Thanksgiving 2020, Evans’ trio will be joined by all-everything vocalist Jazzmeia Horn. -Matt Silver

Photo Credit: Anna Webber