(Sony/Columbia Legacy)Anyone who caught British pianist Neil Cowley’s tribute to the late Dudley Moore in April will maintain heard approximately Moore’s great jazz inspiration – the self-taught swing-piano genius Erroll Garner,whose relaxed effervescence made him one of the few jazz virtuosi whose records inhabited the collections of buffs and the jazz-averse alike. More particularly, this best-selling record from 1955, or Concert By the Sea. The dancing rhythms in Garner’s left hand and the rolling melodic elegance of his right made him one of the happiest-sounding pianists in jazz,an impression pounded domestic by glittery runs, wild trills and galloping cross-rhythms that would teasingly threaten to divorce and then ecstatically embrace. This three-disc set adds 11 new tracks to the original release, and including an account of Caravan that has an astonishing rhythmic audacity,and classics such as I’ll Remember April, with its waywardly admonishing intro giving way to a purring swing glide, or the offhandedly strolling How Could You Do a Thing Like That to Me reinforce the suspicion that perhaps nobody ever made spontaneous piano virtuosity sound easier.
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Source: theguardian.com