Mack Avenue Music Group and Octave Music proudly announce
the Octave Remastered Series, a historic year-long, 12-album project featuring
newly restored and expanded editions of classic Erroll Garner releases from the
1960s and 1970s. Each album contains a newly discovered, unreleased bonus
track. Utilizing the Plangent Process playback system for analog tape, these
new transfers were remastered and, when needed, remixed by the GRAMMY®
Award-winning Garner team.
The Octave Remastered Series -- produced by Peter Lockhart
and Steve Rosenthal -- continues Garner’s resurgence, following his return to
the top of the Billboard Jazz chart with 2015’s GRAMMY® Award-nominated The
Complete Concert by the Sea, which was the first release from the Erroll Garner
Jazz Project—a collective formed to curate Garner’s monumental archive. The
Garner Project followed The Complete Concert by the Sea with the critically
acclaimed, newly unearthed studio record Ready Take One in 2016, and the
midnight concert album Nightconcert, which reached #1 on the iTunes and Amazon
jazz charts upon its release in 2018.
The first four titles in the new series – Dreamstreet,
Closeup in Swing, One World Concert, and A New Kind of Love – will be released
simultaneously on September 27. The subsequent series rollout features one
album per month – A Night at the Movies, Campus Concert, That’s My Kick, Up in
Erroll’s Room, Feeling is Believing, Gemini, Magician, and Gershwin & Kern
– leading up to Garner’s centennial in June 2020.
The master tapes for all 12 albums in the series were
transferred and restored using the Plangent playback system. Employing a
wideband tape head, preamp and DSP package to capture and track the original
recorder’s ultrasonic bias remnant, the Plangent Process removes the wow and
flutter and FM/IM distortion from the recorded audio. This returns the listener
to the original session experience, bringing to life Garner’s incomparable
performances of his own compositions, as well as classic works from the jazz
canon.
During his 40-year career, Garner published more than 200
compositions, the most famous of which, “Misty,” was ranked by ASCAP as the
twelfth most popular song of the 20th century. Since 1954 no other song has
been recorded by more jazz artists except Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll.” In
1971, “Misty” was the centerpiece of jazz aficionado Clint Eastwood’s film Play
Misty For Me. It has also been featured in numerous television shows (Cheers,
Saturday Night Live, Magnum PI, The Muppet Show) and films (Oscar® nominated
Silver Linings Playbook). A previously unreleased studio performance of “Misty”
is included in the Octave Remastered Series, on the Gemini album.
The newly minted bonus tracks in the series are all Garner
originals, eight of the 12 being previously unreleased compositions. “It’s
truly shocking, and one of the greatest joys of this work, to find these fully
realized tunes just sitting there on tape,” says Peter Lockhart, senior
producer of the Octave Remastered Series.
One of the most prolific composers and performers in the
history of jazz, as well as a courageous advocate for African-American
empowerment and artistic freedom, Garner is a legend among jazz pianists. His
unique approach melds bebop and swing influences into a unique, unrivaled
mastery.
Asked to define his musical genius, the late pianist Geri
Allen, who was director of the jazz program in Garner’s hometown at the
University of Pittsburgh, best captured the essence of Garner’s utterly
original vision. “Erroll Garner personifies the joy of fearless virtuosity and
exploration. His playing celebrated the greatest swinging big bands through an
innovative and impossible pianism,” she explains. “Singular yet all embracing,
Garner blurred the line between great art and popular art, and he was a staunch
journeyman of the blues and his Pittsburgh legacy.”
In addition to his brilliant keyboard artistry, Garner is
also a notable figure in popular music history for the hard-won precedents he
set for artistic freedom that still stand today. In 1959, because he had rights
of approval on what was released, Garner successfully sued Columbia Records to
remove an album they had released without his permission.
His victory was the first of its kind for any American
artist in the music industry. Garner and his manager, Martha Glaser,
subsequently founded and launched Octave Records, whose 12 releases make up the
Octave Remastered Series.
Erroll Garner was a rare musician who was equally adored and
respected by peers and devoted fans alike. He and his art were best summed up
by the late trumpeter Clark Terry: “The man was complete. He could do it all.”
SEPTEMBER 27 RELEASES
Dreamstreet - Recorded in 1959, the Dreamstreet tapes sat unreleased while
Garner fought for control over his catalog. Finally issued in 1961 as the first
product of his newly formed Octave Records, it heralded Garner’s return with a
set of performances worthy of the wait. A new Garner original, “By Chance,” has
been added to the remastered release, restored from the original session reels.
Closeup in Swing - The second product of Garner’s Octave Records, this album
features Erroll and his classic trio like they’ve never been heard before,
restored and remastered from the original master tapes. Marking the beginning
of one of the most prolific periods in his life, this new presentation includes
the propulsive, never-before-heard Garner composition, “Octave 103.”
One World Concert - This was Garner’s first live concert album after his
chart-topping Concert by the Sea, recorded seven years earlier. A tour-de-force
performance makes this a worthy successor, complete with his trademark
improvisational fireworks. This new presentation includes extended
introductions as well as an unreleased version of the Garner ballad “Other
Voices,” which has never been issued in a trio arrangement.
A New Kind of Love - While the emotionally charged music of Erroll Garner is
particularly well suited for the big screen and has been used in countless
films over the years, he only ever composed this one film score. A natural
orchestrator and with an uncanny ability to sound like an entire orchestra by
himself, on this record Garner makes singular use of a 35-piece orchestra,
conducted by Leith Stevens, to bring his music to new heights.
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