Gil Evans: Out of the Cool by Stephanie Stein Crease

Among the finest 20th-century orchestraters in any musical genre, a unique bandleader and a singular personality, Gil Evans certainly merits more than one biography. Both of these bios are solid works, quite readable and chock full of information.

Similarly structured, they deal with Evans’ career in a linear fashion and use many of the same sources. Still, there are enough differences between the volumes for them to be complementary. Perhaps the biggest difference is that Stephanie Stein Crease’s Gil Evans: Out of the Cool contains a discography, while Larry Hicock’s Castles Made of Sound: The Story of Gil Evans does not.