Evans Gil, actually Ian Ernest Gilmore Green, *13 May 1912 Toronto, †20 March 1988 Cuernavaca (Mexico), American composer and jazz pianist of Canadian origin. Autodidact. From 1941, he worked mainly as an arranger. He cooperated with, among others, the C. Thornhill Orchestra (1941–48), the Miles Davis Capitol Orchestra (1949–50), and the B. Butterfield and H. McKusick Orchestra (1957). In 1957, he organised his own orchestra mainly for recordings. The most valuable albums of Evans’s orchestra were created at that time in cooperation with M. Davis (the first one – Miles Ahead, 1957). Evans is an outstanding innovator, one of the few who identified the concept of arrangement with a separate, original field of creativity. He achieved impressive – especially as an autodidact – technical mastery, which, combined with rich inventiveness and refined artistic taste, allowed him to develop a highly innovative orchestration style, which is undoubtedly one of the peak achievements in this field. In his orchestra, he moved away from big-band stereotypes, introducing previously unused, diverse combinations of instruments and instrumental groups.
