Don Shirley (born January 29, 1927) is an American-Jamaican jazz pianist and composer.
Shirley's prodigious piano skills were recognized early and Shirley began his career as a composer and virtuoso performer at a young age.
Don Shirley's music is hard to categorize. It is possible to say that as an arranger-composer he treats each piece of music as a new composition, not just an arrangement. Don plays Standards in a non-standard way. He is a virtuoso, playing everything from show tunes, to ballads, to his personal arrangements of Negro spirituals, to jazz, and always with the overtone of a classically-trained musician who has utmost respect for the music he is playing.
Read more about Don Shirley: Biography, Quotes, Discography
Famous quotes containing the words don and/or shirley:
“Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the father’s curse, mother’s moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath,
When they, pale captives, creep to death.”
—James Shirley (1596–1666)