Style
Tyner's style of piano is easily comparable to Coltrane's maximalist style of saxophone. Though a member of Coltrane's group, he was never overshadowed by the saxophonist, but complemented and even inspired Coltrane's open-minded approach. Tyner is considered to be one of the most influential jazz pianists of the 20th century, an honor he earned both with Coltrane and in his years of performing following Coltrane's death.
Though playing instruments of vastly different versatility, both Tyner and Coltrane utilize similar scales, chordal structures, melodic phrasings, and rhythms. Tyner's playing can be distinguished by a low bass left hand, in which he tends to raise his arm relatively high above the keyboard for an emphatic attack; the fact that Tyner is left-handed may contribute to this distinctively powerful style. Tyner's unique right-hand soloing is recognizable for a detached, or staccato, quality. His melodic vocabulary is rich, ranging from raw blues to complexly superimposed pentatonic scales; his unique approach to chord voicing (most characteristically by fourths) has influenced a wide array of contemporary jazz pianists, most notably Chick Corea. Other instruments included the Appalachian dulcimer.
Read more about this topic: McCoy Tyner
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“A man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can’t get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.”
—Anzia Yezierska (c. 1881–1970)
“It is not in our drawing-rooms that we should look to judge of the intrinsic worth of any style of dress. The street-car is a truer crucible of its inherent value.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)