Pianist McCoy Tyner is relaxing in a plush Chinese restaurant in mid-town Manhattan. Outside, the heat and humidity of a Big Apple summer. Inside, the blessed relief of air conditioning. Sipping a cup of iced tea and wearing a black, collarless shirt, an immaculate black suit and trendy shades he is the epitome of cool. "This is my favourite restaurant," he says with a smile as sudden as it is expansive, "they do look after me so well." The chef, major-domo and three waiters, who had been dancing attendance on him, beam appreciatively.
Tyner is a jazz giant in every sense of the word. His athletic frame stands 6 feet 6 inches high and in the 1960s he achieved a completely fresh approach to modern jazz piano. Once the voice of reason that united the competing voices in John Coltrane's classic quartet of 1960-5, he is now a well preserved 62 and one of those rare artists at ease with himself and his art.
A wholly original virtuoso pianist, he carved out a highly personal style that forced almost every contemporary jazz pianist to take account of his methods. "Few musicians in the history of jazz to have radically changed its practice and its daily working vocabulary," said The New York Times.
Yet despite Tyner's achievements, he has never enjoyed the kind of broad following of someone like Oscar Peterson. Maybe his forbidding appearance has kept journalists and opinion-makers at arms length, but in fact it conceals a certain shyness and modesty that borders on the self-effacing. Yes, he is aware that pianists as diverse as Chick Corea and current whizz Jacky Terrason have all learnt from him, but he is happy to have made a contribution. No, he is not worried they may be better known, he is flattered others have found something of value in his style. "I take it as a tribute," he smiles.
For all his modesty, it is the dignity and persuasive force of Tyner's playing that makes it so compelling. He has recorded with semi-symphonic ensembles, Latin ensembles and with voices. He has performed solo, with a trio, quartet and just about every size of ensemble up to his big band, which earned him two Grammy awards in the 1980s. In recent years he has played Burt Bacharach, re-invented standards and his current album, McCoy Tyner with Stan- ley Clarke and Al Foster (Telarc), a "super trio" outing, reveals the dynamic range of his playing, broad in scope but capable of calm reflection. "I like to put myself in new settings to try new things," he says.
"But it's a funny thing, as we move further from the 1960s into a new millennium people still expect me to play like I did with John Coltrane."
It is not only audiences that have typecast Tyner in the role as Coltrane's perennial pianist. Jazz history books lump him in with Coltrane, whom he left in 1965, and fail to document his career any further. "It was very hard to leave John," he says looking back. "He was like a big brother to me. I felt I had grown a lot as a person with him, as well as a musician. Playing with him was a phenomenal experience - that band, John, myself, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums, we had a tremendous impact on the jazz world - not that we planned too - it helped me so much in understanding what music is about."
He was just 22 when he was invited to join Coltrane. The saxophonist had shot to prominence in Miles Davis's group and was widely seen as the hottest new property in jazz. "I met John when I was 17," says Tyner, "I knew him well before. When he passed through Philadelphia we would sit and talk, but strangely not about music. When I joined him it was just the same, the classroom was on stage. I think, looking back, that conceptually there was a meeting of minds. I was young, open-minded and I could hear where he was going musically. It was not a theoretical thing, it was about feeling it, about jumping in and doing it."
With Coltrane he conscientiously and systematically expanded the horizons of jazz and the event of improvisation became liturgic. Yet although this period catapulted Tyner to fame, it took until the early 1970s for him to find his true voice. "I was on a tremendous wave with John. Coming off it takes you time to settle, to find yourself." When he finally reconciled his approach it was if the elements of his playing with Coltrane had been magnified to the power of 10.
The intensity of his playing, his percussive, high-tensile attack, his densely layered sound-sheet arpeggios and thunderous pedal points with his hands pounding the keyboard from shoulder height became one of the most exhilarating experiences in jazz. "You must remember," he says, "the music we developed with John in the 1960s, and my own music in the 1970s, there was a lot of things going on, social things, in America, it was a very tense period. I think music does reflect the times, and living through a very, very explosive period in American history, your music reflects that."
It was a time when every other pianist plugged in and went electric, but Tyner remained steadfastly acoustic, able to make the Steinway grand roar without amplification. One key album of this period, Enlightenment (Milestone), had a key track called Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit. A couple of years ago, it was recorded by the British acid jazz group Red Raw Collective and became a minor hit in club culture, providing Tyner with a conduit to the acid jazz crowds. "I quite liked it," he smiled, "They had voices, backbeat and stuff. It's nice to know that young people can find something in my music."
As with Coltrane, Tyner's audiences are still catching up with him. "I still have that Coltrane experience that I went through, it left a tremendous impression on me. But I have always wanted to go my own way. I never wanted to be Coltrane's pianist without Coltrane. So you build on what you know. Try new ideas. I still have concepts I want to explore. I keep trying, I keep playing; it's all still a big adventure to me."
The McCoy Tyner Trio performs at Vicar Street, Dublin next Saturday as part of the ESB Jazz Series