Holden 2021 - Alley Cat Strut Oscar
: Known for his "powerhouse" piano playing, Holden blended a deep classical background with a stride style reminiscent of Fats Waller.
On a rainy spring evening, after decades of scraping gold from the cracks of city life, Oscar played one last set in the alley where he’d started. The crowd was a patchwork of old students, diner regulars, and strangers who’d traveled just to hear him. He closed his eyes and let the final note hang until even the drizzle quieted. People remember the note not for its pitch but for what it did: it suggested more to come. alley cat strut oscar holden
In 2014, composer created a musical piece titled "Alley Cat Strut" for the Panama Hotel Jazz Project to give a voice to the fictional song from the book. : Known for his "powerhouse" piano playing, Holden
You may not realize it, but you have likely heard the DNA of in other places. Dave Brubeck , who spent time in the Army during WWII near the West Coast, once cited Holden as a "forgotten influence" on his use of odd meters. When you hear the piano in "Take Five," you can faintly hear the ghost of the "Alley Cat Strut" in the left-hand ostinato. He closed his eyes and let the final
Here’s a creative write-up for , written in the style of a jazz retrospective or a moody, lyrical liner note.
Oscar Holden wasn’t born under a streetlamp, but by the time he learned to walk he had already learned how to listen. He grew up in a narrow rowhouse on the edge of a port city where fog rolled in like a slow excuse and the alleys held the town’s true rhythm. His mother mended coats; his father read maps that never matched the tides. Music came to Oscar the way rain did — unannounced, inevitable.
