After reading about Jessica Williams’s tribute to Erroll Garner the other night, the nonpareil singer Carol Sloane sent this reminiscence of a summit meeting of pianists:
When Jessica Williams mentions both Tommy Flanagan and Errol Garner in the course of her set, it reminds me of a night in New York in the 1970’s. I cooked dinner for Tommy and Diana Flanagan in the Greenwich Village apartment Jimmy Rowles and I shared. With hundreds of recordings available to us after the meal, we all agreed to listen to Errol Garner. Smiles all around. Jimmy affectionately called him “Orch” because “he sounds like an orchestra!”