I’m a piano player. Not a real piano player, but I play the piano. I know where to find the notes and the chords I need for my music. I’ve played the piano since I was 8, but I never had a single piano lesson due to unfortunate circumstances: a band instructor told me early on that the piano was for girly boys. Real men played the horn. I believed him.

Still, my band years did teach me to read notes. The problem is that I can’t read them fast enough when I’m sitting in front of the piano. So I’m basically playing by ear, and I’m not half-bad at it. And I have a pretty good ear when it comes to arrangements and piecing musical elements together.

But more than anything else, I feel like an impotent piano player. I will never have the drive, the overview, the fluency or the style of a trained pianist. It’s immensely frustrating, but the piano remains the most important thing in my life along with the people that I love and care for.

That feeling of impotence is never stronger than when I’m listening to jazz pianist Bill Evans. He’s my favorite piano player, and he moves me in ways no other musician has ever done. But every time I listen to his music I get just a little bit frustrated. To be quite honest, I sometimes even get frustrated beyond belief.

I know it’s completely irrational. He’s a world-class jazz pianist, possibly the finest the world has seen. Why would I even begin to compare myself with him?

It’s probably because his music describes my emotions so acurately. He describes my feelings way better than I’ll ever be able to domyself, musically or verbally. And even though I can hear what he is doing technically (sort of), I’ll never be able to replicate it, not even remotely so. Due to my limited technical abilities, my music will never be based primarily on raw (or refined) emotion, like his, but rather on the careful assembly of different parts. I’m not so much a musician as I’m a musical engineer.

Whatever. I bought the first tracks on Evans’ “The Last Waltz” yesterday, and they’re absolutely perfect.

“The Last Waltz” contains the final recordings of Bill Evans - he played nine nights live at Keystone Korner, San Francisco in September 1980. His trio at this point consisted of himself, Marc Johnson on bass and drummer Joe LaBarbera, and the support is flawless. It is widely considered as one of Evans’ finest recordings.

A week after his last performance at Keystone Korner, he died at 50.

Listen to the tracks on eMusic.