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The Big Love: Life & Death with Bill Evans, by Laurie Verchomin
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Jazz music has never been a stranger to aberrant characters. Throughout the form’s artistic and commercial heyday of the past hundred years, the only thing that has come close to upstaging its rapturous sounds are the actual individuals responsible for its creation. Further investigation into most facets of life, particularly where art is concerned, leads to a variety of unimagined eccentricities, but one would be hard-pressed to encounter a stranger gathering of folks than that of the jazz innovators of the twentieth century- an unsettling convergence of sound, addiction, enlightenment, passion, insanity, and everything in between. Yet, among this kaleidoscopic crowd, few entities compose a portrait as bewildering as that of Bill Evans. In the decades since his death, the character of Evans has, if nothing else, become harder to grasp. As his musical legacy continues its ascent to eternity, the creator responsible for this luminescent ladder somehow remains in the background. Whereas information on many jazz icon’s personal lives has become readily available to anyone interested through numerous biographies and documentaries, practically everything published (and there is a fair amount) concerning Evans remains rooted in his music, as it well should. But the flaw in this matter is that, to his ever-expanding legion of devotees, Bill’s influence stretches beyond that of music. From the moment he penned the Zen-tinged liner notes to Kind of Blue, Evans’ public persona has taken on a spiritual air. The luxurious work created by his early trios only served to heighten this semblance. Though not lifted to any sort of leadership role, Evans was viewed by many as a sort of companion on a path to something extending beyond the general Western understanding of existence. Throughout his entire professional career, Evans was also hopelessly addicted to drugs, a fact that was no secret while he was alive, but one that remains difficult to absorb even today. Obviously drugs are not foreign objects in the jazz ambient, but it is too easy to simply throw Evans onto jazz’s steep junkie pile. He was too intelligent, too administrative over his physical and emotional capacities to allow himself to succumb to an addiction which he did not really want. Why then was the man whose shimmering touch and blush-hued harmonies were responsible for transforming the piano into a jazz instrument as expressive and beautiful as any sighing horn such an afflicted soul? For those who have truly fallen under his spell, this lingering question weighs on his entire legacy. Perhaps the closest one will come to answering this and other questions concerning the pianist’s personal life will be through Laurie Verchomin’s memoir The Big Love- Life and Death with Bill Evans. For the final sixteen months of Evans’ life, he and Ms. Verchomin were lovers. It was an incredibly intense period for Evans, both creatively and emotionally. At the time of their meeting, Laurie was only 22 and firmly entrenched in the post-Woodstock youth’s quest for any and all forms of experience. Her recounting of this bohemian lifestyle and the resultant drug experimentation, sexual promiscuity, and aimless drifting are simultaneously touching and absurd, eliciting a response ranging from apathy to deep compassion. Laurie’s account of her brief, but transforming period with this musical giant may not answer the questions that everyone yearns to have answered concerning Evans’ divided and tortured soul. But at the end of it, one somehow admires Bill all the more, as a musician and as a human being. Excerpt from an article by By John Varrallo Musician & Writer
- Sales Rank: #650986 in Books
- Published on: 2011-02-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .36" w x 6.00" l, .55 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 144 pages
About the Author
Laurie Verchomin was born and raised on the Canadian prairies. She studied piano, voice, modern dance and theater in Edmonton, Alberta. As a young woman she had the great fortune to meet jazz icon Bill Evans. Her memoir records her own awakening into love, sex, drugs, spiritual enlightenment, death and jazz as well as the incendiary ascension of one of the worlds most beloved musicians. The Big Love ~ Life & Death with Bill Evans ( Volume 1) Laurie’s first book is now in 17 countries. A French translation is in production, and The Big Love is now being considered for development as a film or stage production. She has performed selected works from the book in New York with the composer/pianist Jed Distler as a part of the Composers Collaborative, and was recently interviewed for a new documentary film about Evans. She is also in the process of creating a multi-media ebook version of The Big Love. Currently she resides on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia with her partner and devotes her time to raising her 13 year old daughter, writing, tai chi and meditation. You can find out more about Laurie and her current projects at her blog site: laurieverchomin.com
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
A Must-Have for fans of Bill Evans
By Win Hinkle
Preface
Before I actually read this book, I had heard various comments about it, some flattering, some not. As there seemed to be no one stepping up to the plate to do a review, I purchased the book from Laurie and volunteered to review it for Jan Stevens' web site, "The Bill Evans Web Pages." It was a complex challenge, increasing my understanding of Bill and Laurie's relationship as well as revealing deeper visions of Bill's everyday living, loving and creating. Reading and re-reading this book, like listening to Bill's music, has been a life-changing experience for me as I expect it will be for you.
"The Big Love," is a love story, but unlike most. The stark realities of Laurie's coming-of-age before meeting Bill, and later, the dried up riverbeds of Bill's addiction are detailed in a narrative that might be shocking to some readers. Laurie writes in a sort of prose that is still liquid and finding its form as the book progresses. You might consider some of it explicit, maybe PG-13, even though quite appropriate to the situation.
In addition to her relationship with Bill, Laurie goes into great detail about the ups and downs of her personal life. We experience vivid details of her transformation from a young girl growing up in Canada in a semi-dysfunctional family. She experiences some difficult situations and sexual encounters through a fast-paced transition to adulthood. Her relationship with Bill figures prominently.
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
After an education that included music theory and a growing understanding of jazz, Laurie has her first encounter with Bill Evans while she is waitressing at a place called the Mayflower Restaurant on 97th Street in Edmonton. The Railtown Jazz Society had booked the trio to perform in this "church/disco/Chinese restaurant." It proves to be a trial by fire for her as she has not seen an audience so entranced by the music that they ignore the waitress trying to serve them drinks. None are big spenders as most are students and professors from Grant McKuen Community College where she was once enrolled.
Either due to the fact that she is inexperienced as a waitress, or the cheapness of the audience, or a combination of both, she is $50 short at the end on the night and has to borrow from a friend to tally-up with the bartender.
After the concert she and Bill get together. Laurie communicates her experience with the bartender to Bill while they spend the evening together at her apartment with other friends. Bill gave her a short note and his phone number written down on the back of one of his manager's business cards asking her to call him. Several days later she gets her first letter from him with $50 enclosed to repay the debt to the friend.
Bill seems to be immediately convinced that he wants to have a long term relationship with the twenty-two year old and invitations and travel arrangements are made for Laurie to join Bill on his tours and performances. This culminates in Laurie eventually joining Bill, not just in hotel rooms while on tour, but as a resident of his apartment in New Jersey for his gigs in the New York City Area and the down-time between performances. After a meeting with Bill's manager Helen Keene, Laurie is given the title of road manager.
The saddest part of "The Big Love" is an event that I thought somehow escaped Bill and his addiction - paranoia. I know that paranoia can be a normal part of an addict's thinking, but somehow I thought Bill Evans was immune, since he seemed to continually compose and perform on a level that transcended those medical symptoms. Alas, that was not the case and when you read this section, it smacks you in the face. Be prepared for it dear reader.
Laurie delivers much of Bill's personal life - vivid descriptions of their love and growing bonds to each other as well as the sinister ogre of Bill's addiction and its consequences. Along the way, we are permitted a close-up look at Bill's crafting of the song "Laurie," from a basic sketch, through various permutations, blossoming to the final version. Simultaneously, we watch his illness progress to the missed nights at the trio's last engagement at Fat Tuesday and, ultimately, to his death.
The book is fascinating and hard to put down partially due to Laurie's prose. Here is an excerpt from Laurie's description of Bill Evans holding court at the Village Vanguard.
"He assumes his position, face draped gently over his hands on the keys. He tilts his head to one side - listening - and I see his face, the sallow skin stretched over the broad forehead, eyebrows raised in astonished agony or ecstasy, his eyes closed behind dark glasses, mouth and jaw open.
This is the expression he has at home composing at the piano. This is the expression he shares with me when we make love. This is his most intimate expression - egoless, vulnerable - full of truth and beauty.
Smoke curls up from ashtrays, filling the darkened red and black room with an eerie blue haze. No one speaks, everyone is in accord. We are all in accord with the intangible feeling of inner beauty decompressing from the depths of our neglected souls - surfacing
We are remembering who we really are. Remembering our place in the perfection of everything. The place beyond words and feelings."
All in all, this a great addition to the small library of written words about Bill. I would place it second only to Peter Pettinger's great work, Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings. You'll also learn the name of Bill's main drug dealer in the last chapter of his life, an anagram of the tune, "Yet Ne'er Broken," a name that I've been trying to figure out for years.
Win Hinkle
This review first appeared at the [...] on March 26, 2011. The reviewer is the editor of the no-longer-published "Letter From Evans," now available free online at[...]
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Excruciatingly raw account of the Demons that plagued a master
By Brian Whistler
I have been a huge fan and of Bill Evans since I was a young man. It was his playing that inspired me to become a jazz pianist. Up until now, Bill's personal life was relegated to rumor and a few apocryphal stories. In his book "How My Heart Sings" , Peter Pettigrew made a point of leaving the shadows of Bill's life on the cutting room floor. In The Big Love, we are finally given a glimpse of the inner Bill Evans, his struggles with addiction and seemingly inevitable path towards self destruction.
But the Big Love is something more than an account of Evans' last tortured year. It is also a courageous and unflinching memoir of a young woman in search of herself who was drawn into the subterranean world of artists, actors and musicians living on the outer edge of experience in a time that encouraged wild experimentation. Thus it also serves as the story of one woman's journey of self discovery and her own artistic awakening.
I found Big Love to be a passionate and vivid account of the last year and a half of Bill Evans' life. Although The Big Love suffers occasionally from awkward prose which at times distracted this reader, the story is so compelling and the writing so honest that despite its shortcomings, I devoured the book in two short sittings. For devotees of the 'church of Bill,' this will be a painful but worthwhile initiation into the demons that haunted Mr Evans, and in taking the journey into the shadows, perhaps we gain some insight into what drove the man to be able to move us to emotional and spiritual depths that artists aspire to but rarely achieve. Bill's music carries with it the imprint of the human spirit's universal dilemma, the archetypal suffering of spirit caught in flesh and the soul's longing for transcendence and unification with (as Bill would put it,) Universal Mind.
I have always found it bewildering that a man possessing such extraordinary gifts and intelligence wouldn't have been more balanced, and that the feeble consolations of substance abuse would have tempted an artist and human being of his caliber. This book offers few insights into what drove him into compulsive addiction, but in reading between the lines I grew to suspect that Bill may have had a brain chemistry imbalance that resulted in some kind of chronically depressive state. His brother Harry had suffered from depression and eventually committed suicide,which certainly added fuel to the fire of Bill's final descent. But then one wonders, if he hadn't been so troubled, would he still have been able to create at such a high level?
For anyone who loves Bill Evan's music and wants to understand what made Bill Evans tick, this is a must read.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
An important piece of the puzzle that was Bill Evans
By Robert Husband
Laurie, This morning I found a couple of hours to tumble into your world. Thank you for sharing such vivid memories of that incredible period of yours and Bill Evans' lives. The joy you felt comes through so clearly but you also communicate the fears and melancholy times so well that at times, while reading, I could have sworn I was sitting across the table from you in a New York coffee shop listening while it was all happening. Clearly, your spiritual view of life was part of what got you through the difficult times, but it sounds like it was a magical adventure that must have been inspiring for the emotion, the places, and the people. What a growing experience! As an Edmontonian, I got a real charge out of your mention of people and places close to home. And the descriptions with sights, sounds, and smells - well done! You really painted the scenes into life! Thanks again for sharing those times, the good and the not-so-good, and letting me in on the roller coaster ride of those 18 months. I will treasure the book and print always. I wish the best of luck to you and that the book gets recognition as an important piece of the puzzle that was Bill Evans".
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