Next Question
International Fingers dept.
20th century pianists…who is missing from this list?
There were always good non-American jazz players going back to at least the 1930s, and perhaps especially good non-American piano players. A few even literally affected the mainstream language, including the Canadians Oscar Peterson and Paul Bley, the Englishman George Shearing, the Austrian Joe Zawinul, and the Panamanian Danilo Pérez; I’m personally influenced by Django Bates (England), Benoît Delbecq (France), Masabumi Kikuchi (Japan), and David Virelles (Cuba). A partial list of other significant 20th-century non-American jazz pianists would include Georges Arvanitas, Gordon Beck, Rainer Brüninghaus, Franco D'Andrea, Thomas Clausen, Wolfgang Dauner, Eliane Elias, Vyacheslav Ganelin, Giorgio Gaslini, Rein de Graff, Michel Graillier, Bengt Hallberg, Ole Kock Hansen, Jan Hammer, Marc Hemmeler, Per Husby, Hideo Ichikawa, Alain Jean-Marie, Egil Kapstad, Joachim Kühn, Adam Makowicz, Louis Mazetier, Marian McPartland, Misha Mengleberg, Tete Montoliu, Simon Nabatov, Mike Nock, Makoto Ozone, Enrico Pieranunzi, François Rilhac, Bernardo Sasetti, Cees Slinger, Martial Solal, Fritz Pauer, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Irène Schweizer, Ed Simon, Bobo Stenson, Lars Sjosten, Aki Takase, John Taylor, Michel Petrucciani, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, René Urtreger, and father and son Bebo and Chucho Valdés.
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Sun Ra was from Saturn.
You definitely need to add Per Henrik Wallin to this list!
It's understandable that you overlooked him since he hasn't achieved the same level of popularity abroad as some of his contemporaries in other European countries. In terms of artistry, though, he’s easily on par with Schlippenbach or Mengelberg. On the pianistic side, his technical mastery is more akin to someone like Phineas Newborn Jr.
A good place to start getting to know Wallin is his recording Coyote, which we’ve also re-recorded with our trio, Oùat, in part to keep his memory alive.