McCoy Tyner
Piano Solo on
Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise

About

McCoy Tyner's piano solo opens the improvisation on this uptempo Village Vanguard reading of Sigmund Romberg's "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise." He takes four choruses of the 32-bar AABA form at approximately 201 BPM, building from spare, modal voicings into increasingly dense and rhythmically propulsive passages that demonstrate his maturing style of quartal harmony and percussive attack. At 22 to 23 years old, Tyner was already developing the harmonic language that would become one of the most influential pianistic voices in jazz. His solo is the first of two, followed by Coltrane's four-chorus soprano saxophone statement.

McCoy Tyner was 22 to 23 years old at the time.