Don Shirley
| Donald Shirley | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Donald Walbridge Shirley |
| Born |
January 29, 1927 Pensacola, Florida, U.S. |
| Died | April 6, 2013 (aged 86) Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Genres | Classical, jazz, gospel, pop |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instruments | Piano, organ |
| Years active | 1945–2013 |
| Labels | Cadence Records, Columbia Records, Atlantic Records |
Donald Walbridge Shirley (January 29, 1927 – April 6, 2013) was an American-Jamaican jazz pianist and composer. Shirley's piano skills were recognized at an early age and he began his career as a composer and virtuoso performer at a young age. Shirley's music is hard to categorize. As an arranger-composer he treated each piece of music as a new composition, not just an arrangement. Shirley played standards in a non-standard way. He was a virtuoso performer, 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.
Shirley was born on January 29, 1927, in Pensacola, Florida. His first teacher was his mother. He began playing piano at age of 2½ and made his first public performance at the age of 3. At the age of nine he was invited to study theory with Mittolovski at the Leningrad Conservatory of Music, and he later studied with organist Conrad Bernier and studied advanced composition with both Bernier and Dr. Thaddeus Jones at Catholic University of America in Washington D. C.
Shirley made his concert debut at the age of 18 with the Boston Pops June 25, 1945, with Dean Dixon as guest conductor playing the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor concerto. In 1946 his first major composition was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1949 he received an invitation from the Haitian government to play at the Exposition International du Bi-Centenaire De Port-au-Prince followed by a request from Archbishop Le Goise and President Estime for a repeat performance the following week.
At Arthur Fiedler's invitation he appeared with the Boston Pops in Chicago in June 1954. He performed the Tchaikovsky concerto in the fall of 1968 with the Detroit Symphony. He has appeared as soloist with the Detroit Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the NBC Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra Washington to name only a few. Including his appearances with the trio, he averaged 95 concerts a year.
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