Piano Music of Mike Garson

When Danny Holt first heard Mike Garson’s music, it was as if it reached out of his stereo speakers and grabbed him. Mike Garson is perhaps best known for his relationship with David Bowie, which began in 1972. He made his mark on numerous Bowie albums and traveled thousands of miles on tours spanning more than four decades, including Bowie’s first and last performances in the U.S. 

Holt and Garson first crossed paths in 2004 when Holt was a graduate student at CalArts, but it turned out Mike had actually heard his playing in a competition he adjudicated several years prior. Garson even helped produce Danny’s first album Fast Jump, also released through innova.  Garson and Holt shared a musical kinship, and that relationship has led them to this album, The Piano Music of Mike Garson. 

Mike Garson and Danny Holt also share in common a voracious appetite for new music and  monster piano technique. Garson developed a compositional process that favored first take improvisational works composed in real-time with the help of a Disklavier that facilitated that monster technique. Holt’s playing and Garson’s music both have a wonderful sense of immediacy, of aliveness, of being on the edge. All of this comes together to form a perfect pairing, and the first time anyone has recorded an album of Mike Garson’s solo piano works. 

Danny Holt has been called “the classical music equivalent of an extreme sports athlete” (The Record) and Gramophone called his Fast Jump album (Innova Recordings, 2009) “a compelling showcase for Holt's innate virtuosity and gregarious temperament.” Known as a champion of adventurous new music, Holt has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Blue Man Group, Bang on a Can All-Stars, California EAR Unit, and the Calder Quartet, among others.

Mike Garson is a composer, performer, producer, and educator widely respected for his impressive skills as a pianist. Born in Brooklyn in 1945 to a musical family, Garson began playing at age 7 and started composing at age 12. Since that time, he has never looked back. In his youth, he studied piano with Leonard Eisner of Juilliard and later earned degrees in music and education from Brooklyn College. He also studied with Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Hal Overton, Robert Starer and Lennie Tristano; and he has played with jazz luminaries such as Stanley Clarke, Elvin Jones, Lee Konitz, Stan Getz, and Freddie Hubbard.