Peter Evans '99, Trumpeter Extraordinaire

This isn’t to say he doesn’t have reason to boast: the jazz publication Down Beat described the 28-year-old as having “the kind of…conceptual smarts that surface just a few times in every lifetime.” His albums, both as a solo artist and with the group Mostly Other People Do the Killing (MOPDtK), have been named to numerous year-end top-10 lists by the likes of The Village Voice and The New York Times.

 

Yet even with all this success, Evans insists his career path was, in many ways, a fluke and a bit of happenstance. “I just kept hitting my head against the wall until things fell into place,” he explains. “Since I was a kid, there was nothing else I was happier doing.”

Evans got the music bug at an early age, playing trumpet in the big band and jazz combo at Rivers and studying jazz trumpet with David Killam and David Zoffer, who introduced him to everything from Charlie Parker classics to avant-garde rock tunes. (Evans was the first student to win Rivers’ David D. Killam Instrumental Music Prize.) After high school, Evans attended Oberlin Conservatory, where he explored experimental projects with bassist Moppa Elliott, with whom he formed MOPDtK in New York in 2003.

MOPTK, which has released four albums and toured extensively internationally, writes on its MySpace page that it “[likes] to play all the jazz, all the time, all at once, as fast as possible.” The group is a loud, frenetic entity that shifts dynamics, tempos, and moods at the drop of a dime. “We throw out ideas that seem to undermine each other, but collectively allow us to go on little adventures you don’t expect,” Evans says.

Since Evans started playing in an “electro-acoustic” ensemble in 2007, he has increasingly experimenting with live processing and other effects. His quartet recently welcomed “computer musician” Sam Pluta, who manipulates sounds on the fly. Evans also utilizes “circular breathing” techniques to prolong his tones, dabbles in indie-rock groups, and has even taken to occasionally playing two trumpets simultaneously. “I like music that can be approached many ways,” he says. “[Music] that can be heard as melodic to one person, and noise to someone else.”

 

Evans says one of the best parts of his job is meeting and working with musical inspirations like saxophonist Evan Parker, who he befriended after a show in 2004. The two kept in touch, with Evans later sending his idol an unreleased solo debut album that, as fate would have it, Parker offered to put out on his own label. “It was a very bizarre sequence of events for someone I so admire to become a mentor and friend,” Evans says.

 

The musician’s two albums on his own are impressive displays of his skills with the trumpet, an instrument rarely showcased on a solo platform. “It’s not about trying to create the illusion of a traditional song with chords,” he says. “It’s about sound and storytelling and melody. I want to learn to play almost in a new language, and have that be interesting for the audience.”

 

Evans’ melodic story will continue: he just recorded a live MOPDtK album for next year, and will be touring Europe in October. He’s also slated to release a record with his quintet this winter, and embarking on a tour with his quartet next spring. “I used to be in 50 different bands that each seemed to play once a year,” he says. “Now I’m involved in fewer things, but am hoping that these different pursuits will be more concentrated.”

 

“There are always opportunities to play,” he continues. “It’s just a question of finding the right ones.”