Don Shirley, multi-genre pianist (1927-2013)

The other night I fell down a rabbit hole and landed, somehow, on the Don Shirley Trio album Water Boy from 1965 (though it appears to have originally been released in 1960 on the Cadence label). Anyway, I was taken aback by the make-up of the trio. Don on piano, but accompanied by an upright bass and a cello. Some further digging seemed to reveal that much of what he recorded was with this line-up/configuration, and it's such a mesmerizing sound.

I guess the easiest shorthand for what he does is jazz, but it's not that. But it is? I dunno. He always has one foot in the rigidity of classical performance, and he also dabbles in the American songbook and traditional spirituals and the way a piano sounds in his hands really pierces me at my very core. I haven't been moved by a musician this way in a very long time.

THEN I read his New York Times obituary from 2013, and learned that he was basically scrambling his entire career after being urged to pursue other forms because the classical set wasn't open to supporting a black prodigy, and that made me fucking sad AND mad.

So, no, nothing I've listened to by Don Shirley so far (and I've gotten through a lot of what's available on streaming and on slsk) is particularly challenging, avant-garde, or earth shaking, but his approach to familiar melodies—deconstructing and rebuilding them in magnificent detail—and the way he sounds on top of the trio's bass/cello foundation has basically put me in a wonderful headspace for the past four days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5s9NnUU50Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5c_zu86SAI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTeBgrY6MZA

There apparently was another Don Shirley thread started by Pete Scholtes at some point, but I couldn't bring it up through Google. :(