Concert By the Sea [Live]

Erroll Garner | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B00000269G
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,653 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The sound is atrocious and the piano is out of tune, yet this live trio recording from September 9, 1955, in Carmel, California, was a bestselling album. Garner brings a wealth of imagination to every performance of every song. On uptempo numbers like "I'll Remember April" and "Red Top" he hammers away with intense left-handed figures while unleashing relentless cascades of improvised lines with his right. On ballads like "Teach Me Tonight" and "April in Paris" he plays with the softest of touches, changing tempo from verse to verse for dramatic effect. His performance of "Autumn Leaves" is so over-the-top it could have gone to parody, but not in the hands of this master entertainer. His humming, grunting vocal accompaniment--he seems to be commenting on "They Can't Take That Away from Me" as he plays it--provides a kind of side show to the performance. More than 30 years later it's still starkly original work. --John Swenson

Product Description

Limited edition Japanese pressing. SME. 2005. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tears to my eyes......., June 30, 2004

By 

GothCrone (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Concert By the Sea (Audio CD)

.....as a little girl in Palo Alto, California probably around 1969 I listened to my father (who is a jazz pianist in his own right) play this record numerous times. It stood out because usually I heard him playing his Bluthner grand piano in his inimitable way and style . . . very influenced by Garner but also his own style.....but then on a regular basis I heard this album. Again and again. It was years later that I realised that although I loved Erroll Garner and had many of his CDs and even his record albums, it was years later that I realized THE recording that was "the one" I remembered -- the one that brings tears to my eyes without seemingly a reason -- it was THIS recording - Concert By The Sea -- I read the editorial review with a smile where they said the "sound is atrocious and the piano out of tune".......well ......no it's not. Not really. It's the sound of "that night" in "that place" and it's Erroll Garner all the way and I give it 5 stars!!!!!! I received my copy today after several months of shamelessly listening to the free samples of the music....(budget is a bit tight these days)... all I can say in closing is this is THE definitive Garner recording!!

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Of A Kind, July 7, 2000

By 

Wayne S. Crooker (Danforth, Me United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Concert By the Sea (Audio CD)

Concert By the Sea has to be one of the finest jazz concert albums ever recorded. The crowd reactions,Errol's grunting and unbelievable rhythm and talent go beyond words.Every serious and even part time Jazz Piano enthusiast simply has to have this album. I was fortunate to have known and been a good friend of Boston's "Bill Marlowe" whose voice and Jazz radio shows were incomperable and who inroduced Errol Garner to the Boston Area and the writer. The Bill Marlowe concert at the Surf Ballroom in Nantasket featuring Errol was a total sell out. Greatest concert I have ever attended. Don't miss this album. Period. It's a "Must Have".

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Jazz Piano In Grand Setting On Top-Selling Garner LP, November 21, 2000

By 

Anthony G Pizza "trivialtony" (FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Concert By the Sea (Audio CD)

Sure, you can't judge a book by its cover, but a CD? Viewing the front of Erroll Garner's 1955 "Concert By The Sea," seeing majestic Pacific Ocean waves slap a Carmel coastline while a woman waves in triumph, leads you to expect grand semi-classical pieces tailored for the era's big-budget films. Or, worse, sentimental pop in the style of that era's top-selling pianist, Roger Williams.

But this Erroll Garner album remains among jazz's all-time sellers and critical favorites for avoiding such tendancies. Given its acoustics (it was recorded in a converted Carmel, CA church) "Concert By The Sea" is surprisingly intimate, energetic, witty, romantic; the concert you'd expect from the composer of the classic (but missing here) standard "Misty."

Garner, with stellar (though barely audible) help from bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Denzil Best, weaves piano trills and walking lines like spider webs around familiar melodies like "Teach Me Tonight," Cole Porter's lyrical "It's All Right With Me," a swift "Where Or When," and the delightfully drag-beat "Mambo Carnival." He delivers funky, jaunty performaces on "Red Top" and They Can't Take That Away From Me." Only the oft-covered, overdramatic "Autumn Leaves" falls flat.

Garner's playing here draws effortlessly from musical styles before and around him: Fats Waller's Dixieland swing, Charlie Parker's bop (Parker played with Garner on "Cool Blues"), Nat Cole's cooler jazz piano, neo-classical and even R&B piano sounds from Charles Brown and Ray Charles. Listen to Garner's rhythmic piano chording throughout and realize that he anchored his own solo piano excursions (and inspired the similarly inclined Dave Brubeck), in near rock-and-roll bass style.

Yet like the era's most beloved jazz stars (Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, to whom he unfavorably compares his voice at LP's end ) Garner remembered to entertain as well as challenge audiences. He redraws the Broadway and show tunes here, but grounds them in stop-time dramatic endings drawing enthusiastic applause. An exuberant, gleeful performance by a master pianist and entertainer, "Concert By The Sea" is essential to any jazz fan and would benefit from the remastering, extra-track treatment given other classics in Sony/Columbia's legendary jazz catalogue.