Evan Morse grew up in Richmond, Virginia, roaming pristine landscapes, fishing with friends in nearby rivers, and befriending the creatures who inhabited the patch of forest near his family home. The son of a domestic worker and a barber who stressed the importance of education, Evan had a keen sense of curiosity. So, when one day he heard the sounds of Gene Ammons and Sonny Rollins emanating from the shoeshine parlor next to his father’s barber shop, he became inquisitive.
“What instruments are these? What is this music?” Evan asked. “Where can I hear more?”
Turns out the shop’s neighbor doubled as a jazz bassist and, to young Evan’s great delight, kept jazz records spinning day and night. And while Evan had always been a bird lover, when he heard Charlie “Bird” Parker playing “Ornithology” one afternoon in the shoeshine parlor, he instantly made the decision to become an alto saxophonist just like “Bird.” Evan says that he was “indoctrinated into jazz by Charlie Parker.” He swiftly joined his junior high school band under the direction of band master Joe Kennedy, Jr. A jazz violinist who went on to arrange and play with Ahmad Jamal, George Shearing and Benny Carter, Kennedy was Evan’s mentor through junior high school and beyond, even advising Evan’s jazz band, the “M.J.P.,” the Modern Jazz Practitioners. (MJQ was already taken, courtesy of the Modern Jazz Quartet.)
Simultaneously playing or listening to jazz every chance he got, Evan went on to obtain a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Tuskegee University, establishing a successful veterinary practice, Warrensville Animal Hospital, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Throughout his bustling veterinary career, however, Evan’s love of jazz never waned. In 1987, Dr. Larry Simpson, then President of the Northeast Ohio Jazz Society, tapped Evan to be his successor which marked the dawn of an enormously prosperous era for jazz music in Northeast Ohio.
Within the first two years of Evan’s leadership, he added an advisory board of prominent civic leaders to NOJS, which opened the path to significant funding from both local and national foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and several others. The organization also added its first full-time executive director, John Richmond, at Evan’s recommendation and went on to forge partnerships with John Carroll University, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, to name just a few.
Under Evan’s leadership, the Northeast Ohio Jazz Society flourished, with a palpable dynamism akin to the spontaneity of a jazz riff. And with the wonder of a young boy hearing jazz for the first time in his father’s Richmond barber shop, Evan found himself emceeing and introducing outstanding artists at a variety of notable venues, including Ahmad Jamal and Benny Carter at Severance Hall; Dizzy Gillespie at the Cleveland Zoo; Jimmy Smith at the Cleveland Museum of Art; Sonny Rollins, Les McCann, and Art Blakey at Cain Park; Cecil Taylor and Ray Bryant at the Cleveland Institute of Music;Jean Carne at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Milt Jackson and Carmen McCrae at Vel's; McCoy Tyner at Nighttown; Ernestine Anderson, Terence Blanchard, and Donald Harrison at the Ohio Theatre; Pharaoh Sanders at the Fountain Blue; and numerous luminaries at many Tri-C JazzFest concerts. and many, many more.
Now near the sunset of his life's work, Evan counts his blessings daily: his wife Randi and their two wonderful daughters, Natalie and Halle, chief among them. He says that being recognized last year by the Tri-C JazzFest as a Jazz Legend is one of the most cherished honors he has ever received.
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Kristan Schiller, a travel writer from Shaker Heights, has written for The New York Times, New York Magazine, CNN, Bloomberg, The Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic.
