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Click on this link to view part two of this piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxyRZ5UG2JE

The Eastman Chamber Jazz Orchestra's Gil Evans Centennial Celebration is the result of a three year collaboration between New York City based producer Ryan Truesdell and the Eastman Chamber Jazz Orchestra, directed by Dave Rivello. Ryan and Dave have a friendship going back a number of years, as well as a mutual love of the music of Gil Evans, from his early arrangements for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra in the 1940s to his celebrated collaborations with Miles Davis in the 1960s and beyond. A few years ago, through Gil Evans' family, Ryan was granted access to thousands of pages of music handwritten by Gil himself. The discovery of some unknown arrangements of Gil's prompted him to call Dave, who without hesitation invited him to Rochester, NY for a reading session with musicians at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester.

From there, these compositions bearing Gil's iconic style, many of which have never been recorded or were previously thought to be lost, came to life in those sessions. While Ryan gathered a collection of musicians in New York City to record an album of selected music spanning more than 30 years of Evans' career, he wanted an opportunity for a more complete representation of this work to be heard. With the partnership of Dave and the Eastman Chamber Jazz Orchestra, they were able to assemble a group of musicians from Eastman that could perform this music live, some of which had not been heard by any audience in decades.

This first part chronicles the genesis of this project and the preparation for the performance of material from two of Gil Evans' masterpieces that he wrote for Miles Davis, "Sketches of Spain" and "Quiet Nights". With Eastman School of Music Associate Professor of Jazz Trumpet Clay Jenkins as a guest artist, the orchestra performed the material on March 27, 2012 in Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music. This concert was one of several performances of the material, which also included two performances at the Montage Grille as part of the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival on June 29th and six performances in Perugia, Italy at the Umbria Jazz Festival in July. Part two of this video follows the Eastman Chamber Jazz Orchestra to Umbria where they played much of the music that preceded and followed the collaborations between Gil and Miles, some of which has never been recorded.

For more information on Ryan Truesdell's Gil Evans Project or the album of new recordings, visit: http://gilevansproject.com/

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