Don Shirley

Who was Don Shirley?

Donald Walbridge Shirley was an American-Jamaican jazz pianist and composer. Shirley's prodigious piano skills were recognized early and he began his career as a composer and virtuoso performer at a young age.

Don 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, 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.