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Erroll Garner: Campus Concert
by Peter J. Hoetjes
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 ...
Continue ReadingThe Octave Remastered Series: Part 2: A Night At The Movies
by Peter J. Hoetjes
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 ...
Continue ReadingErroll Garner: The Octave Remastered Series: Part 1
by Peter J. Hoetjes
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 ...
Continue ReadingErroll Garner: Octave Remastered Series
by Chris Mosey
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. ...
Continue ReadingErroll Garner: Nightconcert
by Peter J. Hoetjes
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 ...
Continue ReadingErroll Garner: Night Concert
by Chris Mosey
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 ...
Continue ReadingErroll Garner: Nightconcert
by Mike Jurkovic
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 ...
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