Pitt jazz week focuses on local music legend Erroll Garner

The 51st annual Pitt Jazz Seminar and Concert will focus on a local jazz legend, the late Erroll Garner.

Running Monday through Jan. 29, the event will feature performances by Pitt jazz students and faculty, a symposium on musicians’ rights, a virtual tour of the Erroll Garner Archive housed at the University of Pittsburgh and a concert featuring critically acclaimed pianist Orrin Evans playing with Pittsburgh-based musicians.

Because of the pandemic, all performances will stream from Bellefield Hall on the University of Pitt’s Music@Pitt YouTube channel. Educational components will take place via Zoom.

Born in 1921 in Pittsburgh, Garner penned the popular jazz standard “Misty.” After performances on riverboats and at The Hurricane in the Hill District, Garner left Pittsburgh in his 20s for a career in New York City.

“The luminary artist Geri Allen, our previous Pitt Jazz Director and my predecessor, was instrumental in acquiring the Erroll Garner archive,” said Pitt Jazz Studies Program Director Nicole Mitchell Gantt. “Erroll Garner is one of the most legendary pianists of jazz history and Pittsburgh is very proud to call him its own.

“The archive has immense value and we’ve barely touched the surface of what it holds. Most importantly, it documents the amazing win that Erroll Garner and his legal team made in securing ownership of his music from a large major record label,” she said. “In addition to Garner’s legal journeys, the archive contains many scores of his incredible music, some of which we will be performing on Monday, Friday and Saturday’s concerts.”

Music and more

Pitt Jazz Week 2022 events include:

• Kickoff performances, 8 p.m. Jan. 24 — Musicians will include the student-based Pitt Jazz Ensemble and Pitt graduate student pianists Samuel Boateng and Irene Monteverde.

• “Jazz Talk” podcast, 7 p.m. Jan. 26 — Mitchell’s podcast on Garner will include comments from Evans and Monteverde, a Pitt jazz doctoral student pianist whose dissertation focuses on Garner. There also will be a 15-minute virtual tour of the Erroll Garner Archives at Pitt, which the University Library System acquired in 2015.

• Musicians’ Rights Symposium, Jan. 27

Part 1: 1-2:30 p.m. — A panel discussion on musicians’ rights, including the difficult terrain musicians must travel to secure ownership of their own music. Panelists will include Pitt music and law faculty members, art historian Tina Rivers Ryan and jazz bassist Matthew Garrison.

Part 2: 3-4 p.m. — Keynote presentation, “The Liberation of Erroll Garner: A Conversation about Music, Money, and Power,” by Robin D. G. Kelley, the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA. Kelley will discuss Garner’s 1950s suit against Columbia Records resulting from his attempts to start his own record label, virtually unheard of at that time. The suit was ultimately successful.

• Jazz Faculty Showcase, 7 p.m. Jan. 28 — Members of the Pitt Jazz Studies Program faculty will perform Garner compositions.

• 2022 Pitt Jazz Collaborative Concert, 7 p.m. Jan. 29 — Live performance by Evans, Jeff Grubbs, James Johnson III and Mitchell.

“Orrin Evans and I will be performing with Pittsburgh greats, James Johnson III on drums and Jeff Grubbs on bass at Bellefield Hall,” Gantt said. “We wanted to have this be live for audiences, but unfortunately, because of covid, the concert will be streamed. Orrin Evans is a consummate musician who handles any terrain with class and soul.”

Philadelphia-based Yamaha pianist and composer Evans has more than 25 albums to his credit without ever relying on the support of a major label. He topped the “Rising Star Pianist” category in the 2018 DownBeat Critics Poll and has two Grammy nominations.

He leads the Captain Black Big Band and collaborates on projects including the collective trio Tarbaby, the guitar/piano duo project Eubanks-Evans-Experience and the Brazilian project Terreno Comum.

The Pitt Jazz Seminar and Concert, founded by the late Jazz Studies Program Director Nathan Davis, was the first academic jazz seminar in the country to feature international artists connecting with aspiring student musicians in a lecture format, then performing together as an ensemble.

On the event’s more than half-century of history, Gantt said, “That’s a long time to keep this going and we’re thankful to still be here.”

For information on Jazz Week performances and to register for the podcast and symposium, visit jazz.pitt.edu.