The Erroll Garner Jazz Project (EGJP) invigorates the musical and cultural legacy of Erroll Garner and supports African American community-based jazz initiatives.
This is the place to learn about the newest Erroll Garner music, musical tributes, panels, reviews, articles by experts and more! See rare videos, photos and hear what other Erroll fans are saying.
Love Erroll Garner, but someone needed to tune the piano for him first. He deserved the very best piano in perfect tune. What a legend, still inspiring this female amateur jazz pianist in England 46 years after his untimely death. The king of jazz pianists for me, with Peterson and Tatum close behind.
Geri Allen was a completely wrong pianist to make a tribute to the great Erroll Garner. She was never swinging and joyous pianist he was. In fact, just the opposite.
Spot on. Any academic exercise to that end is just that: academic. I think Geri is an accomplished pianist and anyone who can make a living in jazz I can support as far as being a survivor with, no doubt, moxie; so I don't want to criticize her or any other pianist who'd want to promote that legacy. But this is just the state of the art right now: the swinging virtuoso pianist is somewhat a dinosaur. Gene Harris and Ray Bryant are gone. Ahmad Jamal has pointed to Garner as his biggest influence, although he plays a completely different style. Garner was his own genre. The similarity would be they both covered a huge amount of material and though both compose, they are more well known for covering standards and pop material in clever fashion. I think Les McCann has that sort of "romp" in his style, (don't know how active he is, and he's much more diatonic than the very chromatic Garner). Dizzy Gillespie says Garner was "our most sanctified" pianist, meaning (gospel) "churchy." Right now who does that style (I do some myself, but I'm not a "name" artist). Dick Hymen can approximate the Garner style, but he's in his late eighties now. Ramsey Lewis swings, but again, can who can really cover that much ground as Garner did??? Not many, if any. I'd say Marcus Roberts might be a good "close" suggestion.
