Jazz Articles about Erroll Garner

About Erroll Garner

Album Review

Erroll Garner's sixth album on the Octave label would mark a pivotal moment in his career. Not only would Campus Concert be his final live recording, it would be the last to include bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin, who comprised his trio for almost a decade. It remains unclear why, after such remarkable success together, they would separate. The albums he recorded with these sidemen, especially Calhoun, who joined in time for Concert By The Sea (Columbia) in ...

Extended Analysis

The Octave Remastered Series: Part 2: A Night At The Movies

by Peter J. Hoetjes
October 24, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2 Most people's appreciation for Erroll Garner begins and ends with Concert By The Sea (Columbia, 1955), the pianist's career-defining performance for an audience of U.S. Infantrymen at the Sunset School in Carmel, California --coincidentally, just ten minutes away from the filming location of Play Misty For Me, Clint Eastwood's jazz-tinged thriller featuring “Misty," Garner's most famous composition. The sound of Garner's piano is arguably the most distinctive one in the instrument's history. While ...

Multiple Reviews

Erroll Garner: The Octave Remastered Series: Part 1

by Peter J. Hoetjes
October 3, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2Most people's appreciation for Erroll Garner begins and ends with Concert By The Sea (Columbia, 1955), the pianist's career-defining performance for an audience of U.S. Infantrymen at the Sunset School in Carmel, California, just ten minutes away from the filming location of Clint Eastwood's jazz-tinged thriller featuring “Misty," his most famous composition. The sound of Garner's piano is arguably the most distinctive one in the instrument's history. While many musicians' influences are readily identified ...

Album Review

Erroll Garner: Octave Remastered Series

Read "Octave Remastered Series" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
September 16, 2019

In 1958 jazz pianist Erroll Garner became embroiled in a bitter legal battle with Columbia Records over money and the fact that the company had released an album of his early work against his wishes. He cancelled his contract with the company and started recording instead for his own label, Octave, making up on lost income by tours of Europe. During the last 18 years of his career Garner recorded a total of 12 albums for Octave. ...

Album Review

Erroll Garner: Nightconcert

Read "Nightconcert" reviewed by Peter J. Hoetjes

by Peter J. Hoetjes
October 27, 2018

The lights dimmed, a spotlight illuminated the stage, and on Saturday November 7, 1964, Erroll Garner, wearing a black tuxedo and almost certainly one of his frequent grins, walked on stage to play piano to an audience of over 2,000 people at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The excitement was palpable, and the crowd roared and clapped with every deft turn he made. Garner didn't read music on a sheet, he never learned. He read his audience. When they were with ...

Album Review

Erroll Garner: Night Concert

Read "Night Concert" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
July 18, 2018

It's the jazz equivalent of finding a Van Gogh or a Ming vase in the attic: the discovery of a complete, perfectly-recorded 1964 concert by one of the music's greatest virtuoso solo pianists. In the beginning was Art Tatum. Then came Oscar Peterson. Finally--and in many ways the most interesting of the holy trinity--Erroll Garner. Garner was famed for his long, rambling introductions. In a section of the liner notes jazz historian Professor Robin D. G. Kelley ...

Album Review

Erroll Garner: Nightconcert

Read "Nightconcert" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
July 13, 2018

Erroll Garner's exuberance and love for his instrument, his music, his players, and his audience breaks today's poisoned and polarized air from the very first note of “Where or When" from Nightconcert, the archival release from the Erroll Garner Project, released on Mack Avenue Records. Recorded with a visceral intimacy and immediacy on November 7, 1964 at the fabled Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Nightconcert is peak Garner, pure and simple, no holds barred. Featuring Garner and his classic ...