Listen to ‘Orgone (Live)’ at Montreaux in 2014 – Miles Davis & Quincy Jones, Arranged by Gil Evans

From a 1987 profile in the Boston Globe about Gil Evans (1912-1988), great jazz arranger and orchestrator, acclaimed for his collaborations with Miles Davis:

He is a gentle, gracious man, but still, it is clear that, for Evans, talking is a frustrating chore, especially when it’s about himself. But he
can also be surprisingly forceful when talking about the work of German psychologist Wilhelm Reich, Reichian therapy (which, he says, leans more to the physical than to the intellectual), and religion.

“The reason most organized religions are wrong is that they are anti-physical,” Evans says. “You are not supposed to have any bodily pleasure except to raise a family. And the other thing, which is much worse, is that they promise you a life thereafter that they can’t deliver. It’s cruel to talk people into accepting a miserable life because they are going to live great after,” he says with just the slightest edge. Then he adds, “I don’t have any fancy thoughts. The reason I’m here is to live my life. No more, no less.”