NEUROPLASTICITY AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF MUSICAL THINKING: BILL EVANS'S WALTZ FOR DEBBY ACROSS TWENTY-FOUR YEARS

Long-term musical practice gradually changes the ways in which a performer hears, anticipates, and organizes musical events. Drawing on current research into neuroplasticity, auditory-motor interaction, and predictive processing, this article considers these changes through two widely separated recordings of Bill Evans’s Waltz for Debby: the concise solo version recorded in 1956 and the extended trio performance from Bad Hönningen in 1980. Particular attention is given to musical time, thematic memory, phrase formation, texture, and the changing relationship between composition and improvisation. Over twenty-four years, the piece develops from a compact presentation of composed material into a broad performance space in which thematic recall, improvisation, ensemble interaction, and long-range expectation coexist. The comparison suggests that mature improvisational thinking depends heavily on accumulated auditory-motor experience and on the capacity to project musical events beyond the immediate present. Neuroscientific evidence is used here as an explanatory context for long-term musical learning; no claim is made that specific neural changes can be reconstructed retrospectively in Evans himself.