Colin Farish wanted to bring his musical sensibilities to not only some of the wonderful standards in the jazz repertoire but also my interpretation of some of the great jazz piano soloists of our time. Although many of these selections may have been improvised at the time they were recorded by the outstanding pianists listed above, I approached each selection as a spontaneous composition, worthy of the reverence, practice and study a classical pianist might give to a work from one of the great masters.
Most renditions on each album are note for note transcriptions from such seminal pianists as Billy Taylor, Billy Childs, Dick Hyman, Richie Birrach, Warren Bernhard and Peter Nero performing Gershwin, Monk, Coletrane, Bernstein and others. In addition to this tribute of my greatest “Influences”, I included some of my own arrangements of such standards as, “When I Fall in Love”, “Porgy and Bess”, Pink Panther and Keith Emerson’s “Trilogy”.
Beautifully recorded and mastered at the famous Skywalker Sound Scoring Stage by Grammy nominated engineer Judith Kirschner, this album is dedicated to the loving memory of Roger Somers.
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