Erroll Garner Octave Remastered Series | “A Night At The Movies” on Mack Avenue

“…the improved sound quality…is really this series’ raison d’être.” – WBGO

The Octave Remastered Series — a historic year-long, 12-album project featuring newly restored and expanded editions of classic Erroll Garner releases from the 1960s and 1970s – continues with the release of A Night at the Movies (October 18, 2019) and Campus Concert (November 15, 2019). Each album in the series contains a newly discovered, unreleased bonus track.

The first four titles in the series – Dreamstreet, Closeup in Swing, One World Concert, and A New Kind of Love – were released simultaneously on September 27 to critical acclaim. The subsequent series rollout features one album per month – A Night at the Movies, Campus Concert, That’s My Kick, Up in Erroll’s Room, Feeling is Believing, Gemini, Magician, and Gershwin & Kern – through June 2020.

The master tapes for all 12 albums in the series were transferred and restored using the Plangent playback system. Employing a wideband tape head, preamp and DSP package to capture and track the original recorder’s ultrasonic bias remnant, the Plangent Process removes the wow and flutter and FM/IM distortion from the recorded audio. This returns the listener to the original session experience, bringing to life Garner’s incomparable performances of his own compositions, as well as classic works from the jazz canon.

The newly minted bonus tracks in the series are all Garner originals, eight of the 12 being previously unreleased compositions. “It’s truly shocking, and one of the greatest joys of this work, to find these fully realized tunes just sitting there on tape,” says Peter Lockhart, senior producer of the Octave Remastered Series.

Garner is also a notable figure in popular music history for the hard-won precedents he set for artistic freedom that still stand today. In 1959, because he had rights of approval on what was released, Garner successfully sued Columbia Records to remove an album they had released without his permission.

His victory was the first of its kind for any American artist in the music industry. Garner and his manager, Martha Glaser, subsequently founded and launched Octave Records, whose 12 releases make up the Octave Remastered Series.

Erroll Garner was a rare musician who was equally adored and respected by peers and devoted fans alike. He and his art were best summed up by the late trumpeter Clark Terry: “The man was complete. He could do it all.”

This classic Garner album contains music from some of the last studio sessions of Garner’s longest running trio, with Eddie Calhoun (bass) and Kelly Martin (drums). After nearly a decade of touring and recording together, they function here as an uncanny musical unit, deftly navigating Garner’s twists and turns. Here are a dozen of his favorite deep cuts from the movies he loved.

This is the final live concert album released by Erroll Garner during his lifetime. It showcases the pianist in rare form, flanked by his classic trio and performing for an attentive and receptive audience of mostly young fans. This new edition includes a previously unreleased version of his rarely recorded “La Petite Mambo,” as well as fully restored musical introductions from the original masters.