Erroll Garner - In Performance

Rating:
Summary: A Truly Fine Pianist in Our Century -- is Well Missed...
Review: CELIA CRUZ mentions Erroll Garner in many of her mambo songs. And I know why. Mr. Mambo King at heart: Mr. Garner was the true definement of "Mr. Pianoman". There is no mistaking about that. What a marvelous arrangement of Mr. Garner's left hand was. His left hand appears (to many other pianists) as if its his "RIGHT HAND". Mr. Garner appears to have two right hands!)

My mentor's (Mr. Garner's) recording is presented with class, pride, and an endearment to his music and piano, as witnessed on this DVD, which is to me a most treasurable (and invaluable) piece of item I AM SO PROUD TO OWN. Thanks to the executors for the fond memories captured and recorded on DVD!! Many thanks to them. **AB**

Rating:
Summary: A Truly Fine Pianist in Our Century -- is Well Missed...
Review: CELIA CRUZ mentions Erroll Garner in many of her mambo songs. And I know why. Mr. Mambo King at heart: Mr. Garner was the true definement of "Mr. Pianoman". There is no mistaking about that. What a marvelous arrangement of Mr. Garner's left hand was. His left hand appears (to many other pianists) as if its his "RIGHT HAND". Mr. Garner appears to have two right hands!)

My mentor's (Mr. Garner's) recording is presented with class, pride, and an endearment to his music and piano, as witnessed on this DVD, which is to me a most treasurable (and invaluable) piece of item I AM SO PROUD TO OWN. Thanks to the executors for the fond memories captured and recorded on DVD!! Many thanks to them. **AB**

Rating:
Summary: A Truly Fine Pianist in Our Century -- is Well Missed...
Review: CELIA CRUZ mentions Erroll Garner in many of her mambo songs. And I know why. Mr. Mambo King at heart: Mr. Garner was the true definement of "Mr. Pianoman". There is no mistaking about that. What a marvelous arrangement of Mr. Garner's left hand was. His left hand appears (to many other pianists) as if its his "RIGHT HAND". Mr. Garner appears to have two right hands!)

My mentor's (Mr. Garner's) recording is presented with class, pride, and an endearment to his music and piano, as witnessed on this DVD, which is to me a most treasurable (and invaluable) piece of item I AM SO PROUD TO OWN. Thanks to the executors for the fond memories captured and recorded on DVD!! Many thanks to them. **AB**

Rating:
Summary: High level entertainment
Review: Having heard most of Garner's piano works - including "Solo Time" and "Concert by the Sea" - I agree with mr. Nevagich on the musical quality of this DVD.
It is a BBC production showing the Erroll Garner trio entertaining a London audience, circa 1964.
Being a black-and-white recording in mono, sound and picture quality still has got a reasonable level.
This is the first time I see Garner live, and was VERY impressed musically, technically and on a personal level.
Errol Garner had this inexplicable charisma, which is adding to his performance - something I am sure people will appreciate when watching him.
In his hands just about any piano-technical difficulty LOOKS easy. A sign of class, I would say.
Kelly Martin on drums and Eddy Calhoun on bass are clever musicians backing him up in an intelligent way. It is obvious that they all are having a good time. This includes the audience who is working like "a fourth member of the group", as someone (maybe Garner himself) once said.
As usual nothing is decided, Garner just plays whatever he feels, Martin and Calhoun follow their leader.
That is what jazz is all about: playing what you feel.
Garner was mentally and technically able of carrying this out into practice.
The man for whom the piano was invented, someone said.
The best piano player there ever was, says I.

Kurt Starlit
Copenhagen
February 21, 2003

Rating:
Summary: High level entertainment
Review: Having heard most of Garner's piano works - including "Solo Time" and "Concert by the Sea" - I agree with mr. Nevagich on the musical quality of this DVD.
It is a BBC production showing the Erroll Garner trio entertaining a London audience, circa 1964.
Being a black-and-white recording in mono, sound and picture quality still has got a reasonable level.
This is the first time I see Garner live, and was VERY impressed musically, technically and on a personal level.
Errol Garner had this inexplicable charisma, which is adding to his performance - something I am sure people will appreciate when watching him.
In his hands just about any piano-technical difficulty LOOKS easy. A sign of class, I would say.
Kelly Martin on drums and Eddy Calhoun on bass are clever musicians backing him up in an intelligent way. It is obvious that they all are having a good time. This includes the audience who is working like "a fourth member of the group", as someone (maybe Garner himself) once said.
As usual nothing is decided, Garner just plays whatever he feels, Martin and Calhoun follow their leader.
That is what jazz is all about: playing what you feel.
Garner was mentally and technically able of carrying this out into practice.
The man for whom the piano was invented, someone said.
The best piano player there ever was, says I.

Kurt Starlit
Copenhagen
February 21, 2003

Rating:
Summary: A delightful DVD!
Review: This DVD resurrects Erroll Garner in as good a picture and sound quality as one could ever hope to get (-frankly alot better than even some recent jazz recordings, despite this being black and white): full credit to the BBC and whoever else responsible including the original filming crew (great angles) and the DVD publishing company who gave us this valued historic viewing. It is sheer delight to see E.Garner and hear him so clearly; the songs are very enjoyable and audio quality is very good indeed. I heartily reccommend this to any jazz piano enthusiast. Please, please give us more Garner (or other old greats like Sarah Vaughan) in this DVD quality! Worth every dollar of its price tag.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: This is simply the most amazing DVD of a jazz concert. Erroll Garner is perhaps the most musical, talented, natural and gifted piano player I have ever heard. I have always been a fan and if you are a fan or not get this DVD, you won;t regret it. One thing, Amazon have it coded region 1 but it played on my region 2 player. I think its open coded(Amazon please note) so it should work everywhere.

Rating:
Summary: Goodness gracious
Review: When I heard that they were releasing a DVD of Erroll Garner in performance--a full 70 minutes from a 1964 BBC special--I just about hit the ceiling. By 1964, Garner was quite out of fashion, what with the avant-garde ramblings of Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman and the likes taking center stage, but he had lost very little of his power. Now, years later, all those experimental trends fall away in the presence of Garner's genius. He's joined that uppermost level of jazz pianists--along with Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Monk, Bill Evans, and a tiny handful of others who have become genres of one...singular geniuses. Garner, like Monk, like Tatum, used all of the keyboard, making 88 keys sound like 188. He was a one-man orchestra. But even more astonishing than his technique was his fresh interpretation of standards, almost like intense studies of the compositions. He'd take a tune like "Autumn Leaves" or "I Cover the Waterfront", slow them down, expose and explore every nuance of the melody, make it new. His playing was often baroque, often complex, but always beautiful, and he never even learned to read music. This performance has about 17 tunes, though strangely, he does not play "Misty", his extraordinary signature tune that he played night after night. However, the guys behind the DVD had their thinking caps on, and added an audio performance of it. Now you're out of excuses.

Rating:
Summary: The Man that piano was invented for
Review: Where do I begin..? My GOD..from the minute He started to play...tears came to my eyes..how could anybody be so~~ good..and sensitive..? leave it to British to preserve our national treasures...Eroll Garner plays piano in this DVD(live in BBC in England) with his working group..his famous introductions that leaves no clue as to what's coming up...including his own band members..is pure Gold..and pure JAZZ...how smooth he enters the tune..and how smooth everybody else follows him..is behind comprihension for commen men...I am a Jazz musician..and anytime I see this DVD I am very happy but also in the same time sick to my stomach that there are or there were human beings who were so~~ good..playing their instruments..do'nt think twice just get the DVD..before..is no longer available..show them to your children..show them to the teens that they think they know who the cool musicians are..show them to who ever will watch...show them an American ican at his best....need I say more...?