Gil Evans was “one of America’s great jazz composers and arrangers. … In the course of his career he became, after Duke Ellington, the most important composer and orchestrator in postwar jazz. … It was with the Thornhill band, between 1941 and 1948, that Mr. Evans first started making a name for himself, writing luminescent, floating arrangements and reworking be-bop standards.”
–Peter Watrous, New York Times, March 22, 1988