Through the eyes of those who were close to him, MISTY approaches one of jazz&#;s greatest mysteries: who was the man behind the ever-friendly smile?
The idol of my youth
I have been playing the piano since I was a child, because our father put me and my sisters on the piano at a very early age, classical music of course, as it should be in a good home in Paris. Later, in the seventies, we discovered jazz: Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, Rhoda Scott. But at home we were only allowed to play Mozart or Bach: we played jazz in secret. One day our father found our jazz records and broke them. As Erroll Garner died, i almost had the feeling to have lost a brother.
Sometime later I discovered a pianist who became the greatest for me and whose elegant, easy and natural virtuoso playing I still love and admire today: Erroll Garner, the idol of my youth. Garner was one of the most ingenious pianists of the 20th century, a celebrated artist who was world-famous in his lifetime and who performed in the largest and most important concert halls of the world.
But it became strangely quiet around Erroll Garner and today he is almost forgotten. While names like Miles Davies, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk or John Coltrane are still o