Within Dick Hyman’s Century of Jazz Piano (Arbors), a five-disc CD set totaling 121 selections, pianist Dick Hyman seeks to demonstrate the development of jazz piano from its pre-ragtime beginnings to its near present (recorded mainly in 1996-7). This includes accurate early styles and techniques (far from primitive) to the complex harmonies, rapid notes and increased improvisation of the more recent pianists.
This set doubles as an entertainment source for someone who just wants to listen and an educational tool for someone who seeks to learn about what jazz piano was and what it now is. As Dick Hyman states in the booklet contained with the set, “This is a survey, admittedly subjective, of many of the talented musicians, and a presentation of the jazz piano improvisations that they invented.” It might help a contemporary musician to appreciate and possibly learn from the ancestry of the music as well as assist a traditionalist to understand and enjoy later concepts.
The first two and a half CDs trace the development from pre-ragtime to late swing. Hyman, with varying degrees of personal improvisation (always within the idiom, documented by him in the booklet) expertly performs works by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, Duke Ellington, and Art Tatum, among others. Some of these artists are refle
