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Nardis (composition)

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"Nardis" is a composition by American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. It was written in 1958, during Davis's modal period, to be played by Cannonball Adderley for the album Portrait of Cannonball.[1] The piece has come to be closely associated with pianist Bill Evans, who performed and recorded it many times throughout his career.

Composition and the original recording

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First eight measures of Nardis[2]

From 1955 to 1958, Miles Davis was leading what would come to be called his First Great Quintet. By 1958, the group consisted of John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums,[3] and had just been expanded to a sextet with the addition of Cannonball Adderley on alto saxophone.

Coltrane's return to Davis’s group in 1958 coincided with the "modal phase" albums: Milestones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959) are both considered essential examples of 1950s modern jazz. Davis at this point was experimenting with modes—i.e., scale patterns other than major and minor.[4]

In mid-1958, Bill Evans replaced Garland on piano and Jimmy Cobb replaced Jones on drums, but Evans, too, left after eight months, replaced by Wynton Kelly in late 1958.[5][6] This group backing Davis, Coltrane, and Adderley, with Evans returning for the recording sessions, would make Kind of Blue, often considered the greatest jazz album of all time.[7][8][9][10] Adderley left the band in September 1959 to pursue his career, returning the line-up to a quintet.[11]

In July 1958, Evans appeared as a sideman on Adderley's album Portrait of Cannonball, which featured the first performance of "Nardis", specially written by Davis for the session. While Davis was not very satisfied with the overall performance, he said that Evans was the only one to play it in the way he wanted.[12] The piece would come to be associated with Evans's future trios, which played it frequently.[1]

[We're gonna] finish up featuring everyone in the trio with a Miles Davis number that's come to be associated with our group, because no one else seemed to pick up on it after it was written for a Cannonball date I did with Cannonball in 1958—he asked Miles to write a tune for the date [the album Portrait of Cannonball], and Miles came up with this tune; and it was kind of a new type of sound to contend with. It was a very modal sound. And I picked up on it, but nobody else did. ... The tune is called "Nardis."

— Interview at Ilkka Kuusisto's home, ca.1970, Bill Evans[13]

The use of the Phrygian mode and the major Gypsy scale[14] in this tune is also present in other "Spanish" works from those years, notably Davis's Sketches of Spain.

Davis never recorded "Nardis",[15] and Adderley only did on that one occasion.[16]

Later Bill Evans recordings

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"Nardis" became an integral part of Evans' repertoire, and it appears on many of his albums: Trio at Birdland (1960), Explorations (1961), The Solo Sessions, Vol. 1 (1963), Trio Live (1964), Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival (1968), Quiet Now (1969), You're Gonna Hear from Me (1969), Live at the Festival with Tony Oxley (1972), The Paris Concert: Edition Two (1979), Turn Out the Stars: The Final Village Vanguard Recordings (1980, four versions), and The Last Waltz: The Final Recordings (1980, six versions), among others.[17] It also appears on many of Evans' filmed appearances.[18]

According to Evans biographer Peter Pettinger, it was during the late 60s that the pianist's "performances of 'Nardis' began to assume marathon proportions: twenty-minute interpretations were a nightly event, centered around Jack DeJohnette's thrilling solo."[19] With his final trio, featuring bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbera, which is most closely associated with this piece, Evans considered "Nardis" to be "therapy for each of them" and "almost wished they could line up twenty or so of these 'Nardis' performances and put out a four-album set."[20]

Guitarist John McLaughlin recalled hearing a version of the piece at the Village Vanguard near the end of Evans' life "during which Bill played the most phenomenal introduction ... followed by a rendition that had Dave Liebman and myself jaw-dropping."[21] The Evans version from Montreux was later sampled by Madlib on the Madvillainy track "Raid" (2004).[22]

Form

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Nardis makes use harmonically and melodically of the Phrygian dominant scale and the minor Gypsy scale (technically known as the double harmonic scale), and it is set in thirty-two-bar AABA form. Bill Evans usually played the piece in E minor.

Chords in Nardis as played by Bill Evans
Section Harmony
A (mm.1-8) Em7 Em7 Fmaj7 B7 Cmaj7 Am7 Fmaj7 Emaj7 Em7
A (Mm.9-16) Em7 Em7 Fmaj7 B7 Cmaj7 Am7 Fmaj7 Emaj7 Em7
B (Mm.17-24) Am6 Fmaj7 Am6 Fmaj7 Dm7 Dm7 G7 Cmaj7 Fmaj7
A (Mm.25-32) Em7 Em7 Fmaj7 B7 Cmaj7 Am7 Fmaj7 Emaj7 Em7 (B7)

Title and authorship

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The title of the piece has remained something of a mystery. According to jazz critic Ted Gioia, a "third-hand account" has it that Davis overheard "a fan requesting a song from an uncooperative Bill Evans, who allegedly replied, 'I don't play that crap ... I'm an artist.' Add a slight New Jersey accent to that last phrase, and you arrive at something similar to 'n'ardis.' Until a better hypothesis comes to light, this one will have to do."[23]

Drummer Joe LaBarbera notes, "Throughout his career, Bill played ['Nardis'] so often and so well that many have assumed he composed it despite his consistent denial of authorship."[24] And it is true that Evans was not shy about claiming the authorship of "Blue in Green". Nonetheless, pianist Richie Beirach, who recorded "Nardis" himself, has made a case for Evans' authorship, noting that it's a more sophisticated piece than Davis usually wrote, that it seems to be a pianist's piece, that its compositional principles resemble those of other pieces by Evans, that Davis never recorded it, and that Evans played it throughout his career. Beirach admitted, though, that his argument is largely based on a "gut feeling", speculated that possibly Evans gave Davis the publishing rights as part of "some business arrangement", and concluded that "regardless of who wrote 'Nardis', it's a lifelong gift to all of us."[25]

Other notable recordings

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References

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  1. ^ a b Pettinger 2002.
  2. ^ Davis, Miles (2006). "Nardis". The Real Book. C Instruments. Vol. 1 (6 ed.). Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard. p. 296. ISBN 978-0-634-06038-0.
  3. ^ Richard Cook. It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off Record. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-532266-8, pp. 44-45.
  4. ^ Milestones – Encyclopædia Britannica Online
  5. ^ Cook, pp. 93-95, 110.
  6. ^ Miles Davis and Bill Evans: Miles and Bill in Black & White, Sept. 2001, Ashley Kahn, JazzTimes.
  7. ^ The All-TIME 100 Albums. Time.com. Retrieved on August 19, 2008.
  8. ^ The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time Archived 2008-06-23 at the Wayback Machine. Rolling Stone. Retrieved on August 19, 2008.
  9. ^ Rateyourmusic's 'Top Albums of All-Time'. Rate Your Music. Retrieved on August 19, 2008.
  10. ^ Tower.com – Kind of Blue review notes Archived 2012-07-16 at the Wayback Machine. Tower.com. Retrieved on August 19, 2008.
  11. ^ Cook, p. 123.
  12. ^ Pettinger, Peter. Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, Yale University Press, 1998, p. 58.
  13. ^ "- YouTube". YouTube.
  14. ^ Evans explicitly deems the work as very "modal"; see quote.
  15. ^ "Miles Davis Discography". JazzDisco.org, Accessed May 6, 2025
  16. ^ "Cannonball Adderley Discography". JazzDisco.org, Accessed May 6, 2025.
  17. ^ "Bill Evans Discography". JazzDisco.org, Accessed May 6, 2025.
  18. ^ Among others: London (19/March/1965); Oslo (1966), Helsinki (1970); Umbria Jazz (1978); Jazz Manteniance Shop (1980).
  19. ^ Pettinger, p. 189.
  20. ^ Pettinger, pp. 268-69.
  21. ^ McLaughlin, John. "Introduction" to The Big Love: Life & Death with Bill Evans by Laurie Verchomin, 2010, p. 8.
  22. ^ "Raid". MuseScore.com, Accessed May 6, 2025.
  23. ^ Gioia, Ted. The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 290.
  24. ^ LaBarbera, Joe. Times Remembered: The Final Years of the Bill Evans Trio, University of North Texas Press, 2021, p. 105.
  25. ^ "Who really wrote Nardis?" MusicSavvy.com, Accessed May 28, 2025.
  26. ^ Alyn Shipton. 'The New Jazz Orchestra: Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe', review in JazzWise
  27. ^ "Eon". AllMusic.com, Accessed May 28, 2025.
  28. ^ "Elegy for Bill Evans". AllMusic.com, Accessed May 28, 2025
  29. ^ "Evanessence: Tribute to Bill Evans". AllMusic.com, Accessed May 6, 2025.
  30. ^ "Alive at the Vanguard". AllMusic.com, Accessed May 6, 2025.
  31. ^ "Overpass - Marc Johnson | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 3 February 2022.
  32. ^ Jarrett, Nigel (15 November 2021). "Marc Johnson: Overpass". Jazz Journal. Retrieved 7 February 2022.

Books

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  • Pettinger, Peter (2002) [1999]. Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings (New ed.). Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09727-1.
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