When I was 14 or 15 years old my stand-in piano teacher was a German pianist who had played at jazz clubs in New York. He was almost certainly responsible for really sparking my interest in jazz. My home task after the first lesson was to go and buy a disc with Oscar Peterson!
This was followed by numerous records. Everything from Art Tatum to Cecil Taylor, via stop-overs with Swedish pianists like Bengt Hallberg and Jan Johansson. The “History of Piano Jazz” is my personal homage to some of the jazz pianists whom I feel emotionally closest to. It was a difficult choice and many of the giants of jazz piano had to be excluded. For example, Earl Hines, Hank Jones, Red Garland, Lou Levy, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, to name a few. There were many fine Swedish pianists whom I also had to exclude: like Reinhold Svensson, Charlie Norman, Esbjörn Svensson and Bobo Stenson.
Paying homage to one’s idols by performing their music in their characteristic styles is a difficult art. How, for example, can one interpret someone like Erroll Garner without losing one’s own identity? And so this concert programme does not seek merely to imitate the pianists but to play my own interpretations through my models.
Rediscovering my idols has been a wonderful time travel. Their creativity, their enthusiasm and their love of the piano are a constant source of inspiration and a stimulus to my own musical development.
Enjoy the ride! Jan Lundgren
”History of Piano Jazz”
is also available on a CD which is sold
exclusively in conjunction with the concert performances.
