Charlie Parker 100th Anniversary Celebrating with: Bill Evans, piano (from 'The Solo Sessions, Vol.2'), recorded January 10, 1963. Recording cited for educational purposes only. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF8-LrkLKjQ Many thanks to Dr. William Hughes for his channel and all his accurate transcriptions: http://drwilliamhughes.blogspot.com.au​ (quote) The Charlie Parker/Benny Harris tune 'Ornithology' is a slight oddity in the Bill Evans catalogue. As far as I'm aware, there was only one other instance of his involvement with this tune, as a sideman on the technologically 'experimental' Benny Golson album 'Pop + Jazz = Swing', where it plays simultaneously with a version of 'How High The Moon' by a completely different 'pop' ensemble, and where both songs are split between the right and left channels respectively. The results from this session were re-issued on CD a few years ago as 'The Complete Triple Play Stereo Sessions'. Needless to say, the rigid nature of the whole project makes the music swing as much as a high school trumpet student does playing along to a clicktracked backing CD, as I've experienced first-hand more than enough during my teaching tenure at these very schools...but perhaps I'm being a little harsh. Evans' solo version is a little more successful and a little more interesting, but is still a product of its time from this transitional period in Evans' career. The opening texture, featuring an extended unison line at the octave, while naturally befitting its bop origins is also facturally uncommon in Evans, although this texture reappears on a much smaller scale at the end of 'April in Paris', recorded during the same session. At the very opening of 'Ornithology', Evans alters the five-note rising scale of the tune from diatonic to whole-tone, and it's almost as if the purpose of the introduction is then to explore the various ramifications resulting from this change. Although I described the line as a 'unison' , in reality it isn't - in both this and the 'April in Paris' sections, there are slight discrepancies between both hands, occasionally through sloppy playing, occasionally through mannerism, which either way make the line just that little bit more three-dimensional, and which I've tried to capture in my transcription as much as reasonably possible. The square brackets again indicate straight playing in a swung context, although Evans oscillates between the two so often (and moves through all the shadings in between - a universal rhythmic mannerism of his style), that they can only function as a broad indication. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJsGPu6alRI