by Nonna Skumanich (C-RS, Durham, NC)Published in New Rusyn Times 2006, Vol. 13, No. 2Prepared from the original by Peter Simkins Sluk (C-RS, Cleveland, OH) To any student of American music, Bill Evans (1929-1980) is a well-known figure-considered one of the greats in Jazz. He worked with a number of top jazz artists including Charles Mingus, Art Farmer, Stan Getz, and Miles Davis. He did a number of recordings building a vast discography. Described by many as the “fountainhead of modern jazz piano,” with a rich and lyrical improvisational and compositional style, his influence extended to artists such as Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, and Lyle Mays to mention only a few. It is less widely known that Bill Evans was half Carpatho-Rusyn! And what’s most interesting about his music is the way in which he infused it with his ethnic sensibilities.  I first learned of Bill Evans quite by accident. A friend of a friend played a recording of his when we were visiting and right then I noticed something quite special in the quality of his music. Years later I came across the biography, Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings by Peter Pettinger, and discovered that Bill Evans was actually half Rusyn and half Welsh and grew up surrounded by the music of his Rusyn immigrant family including the sacred music of the Orthodox Church. Interestingly, Pettinger missed the fact that Evans was part Carpatho-Rusyn, describing him as Russian, but when one reads in the book of Evans’s maternal grandparents, the fact is inescapable. His mother, Mary Soroka, wasn’t Russian but was in fact Rusyn.  Mary’s parents had come from Galicia and settled in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. Her father, Ivan Soroka came from Brunary, a Lemko village in southeastern Poland, while her mother, Anna Matijcak, was born in Carna, at the foot of the Carpathian mountains. Carna was part of the Brunary parish. When Mary Soroka’s father was killed in a coal mine accident, she and her sister lived for several years in the nearby Orthodox orphanage where they spoke only Russian according to Pettinger. This must have been the orphanage established at St. Tikhon’s Monastery in South Canaan, Pa., just up the mountain from Scranton.  Both of Bill Evans’s parents were musical. His father, Harry sang regularly in a barbershop choir, and often with his drinking buddies. His mother loved the music of the Orthodox Church and also […]