Although he remains one of the most admired and listened-to musicians of the era after bebop, Evans left a difficult and sometimes contradictory legacy. He studied classical piano and violin from an early age but played in bands for dancing in his teens and first performed in New York around 1950. After army service, he began working with a circle of players which included Don Eliott and Tony Scott, and in 1956 made two important recordings, the George Russell Jazz Workshop date, with Evans's dazzling feature Concerto For Billy The Kid, and his own debut for Riverside, New Jazz Conceptions (producer Orrin Keepnews was persuaded into recording him simply through hearing some of his music played down a telephone line). At this point, Evans was already very much his own man as a stylist, although there was also an extra energy in his early music which was, arguably, subsequently dispersed. He was briefly with Charles Mingus (East Coasting, 1958), and then made a crucial alliance with Miles Davis: his participation in the Kind Of Blue sessions in 1959, to which he contributed much of the musical substance despite receiving no composer credits, helped Davis's movement towards modal jazz – ironically enough, since as a pianist Evans might have been perceived as dependent on chordal sequences. What Davis admired and drew from was Evans's ability to convey an impressionistic feel, at a time when most pianists played in more of a funky, even an abrasive manner. Evans didn't entirely shy away from that approach – his right hand often sounds like a graft from Horace Silver – but he did voice his harmonies in ways which melted preordained chord sequences and let melodies flow with more freedom. However, his appearance on this date was more like a coda to his work with Davis: he had actually left the working band some months previously because of his drug addiction, a habit he had first picked up in the army and which would blemish the rest of his life. At the end of 1959 he formed a new trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, and made a series of memorable studio and live (at New York's Village Vanguard) dates with them. Abetted by LaFaro's extraordinary virtuosity, the group reached almost ecstatic heights of collective playing, the polyphonic voicings of piano and bass intermingling over Motian's calmly propulsive work. But it all fell to pieces when LaFaro was killed in 1961, and Evans withdrew from performing altogether for a time. Eventually he put together a new group in 1963, with Larry Bunker and Chuck Israels, and for the rest of his career Evans toured and recorded in the trio format with only a few scarce exceptions to his regimen. His later groups included Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell, Gomez and Eliot Zigmund, Michael Moore and Philly Joe Jones, and finally Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera. While his playing seemed to retreat into a more evasive lyricism after the LaFaro period, he never lost the energy in his performances, and it merely came out in different ways. The oft-repeated idea that Evans's music somehow became becalmed is untrue, especially with such assertive players as Gomez behind him. As a composer, he gradually compiled an impressive book: Waltz For Debby, his best-known piece, was there right at the start, and he never stopped playing it, but other significant tunes included Turn Out The Stars, Very Early, Re: Person I Knew and more. He also had his own favourite setlist of standards, which he added to only slowly and cautiously. There are scores of live and studio albums by his various trios, but only occasional visits to other playing situations: a couple of meetings with Jim Hall are gorgeous, and there are a few solo sets, although Conversations With Myself (1963) was a celebrated, multi-tracked solo record. Other meetings with players he might have been expected to do great work with – Stan Getz, Lee Konitz – were disappointing. His posture at the piano – hands almost flat on the keys, back bent, his face nearly touching the keyboard – added to the sense of Evans as introvert, but it was his narcotics addictions – both heroin and latterly cocaine – which may have fuelled this impression of a man in withdrawal. Despite a final breakdown in his health, he worked to the very end. Some multidisc sets exist of music made in the last days of his life: outwardly expansive, they hint at a beauty turning mechanical and sour. His influence, though, remains close to overpowering: there must be hundreds of pianists who came after him whose work has been compared directly with his own example.

Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).

If you'd like more information, check out The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2002) or The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (2007), both of which are still in print.