The Greatest Jazz Pianists: 20 Piano Masters Who Defined the Instrument

These are 20 jazz pianists who changed how the instrument is played, listed by year of birth from Duke Ellington (born 1899) to Robert Glasper (born 1978), each with the records to start with. The selection rests on influence and recordings, not fame. If you want one name for the greatest, it is Art Tatum, the pianist the others measured themselves against: Teddy Wilson said that “Art Tatum was the master of all of us.” After the list come the women who shaped jazz piano, today’s modern players and where to hear them in New York.

The 20 Greatest Jazz Pianists in Order of Birth

1. Duke Ellington (1899-1974)

Ellington’s fame as a composer hides how good a pianist he was. He learned James P. Johnson’s stride piece “Carolina Shout” note for note from a 1921 piano roll, and for 50 years he led his orchestra from the keyboard. Of his more than 1,000 compositions, the best-known Ellington songs are in every jazz musician’s repertoire. Money Jungle, a trio session from September 1962 with Charles Mingus and Max Roach, puts his piano up front.

Start with: Money Jungle (United Artists Jazz, 1963).

2. Earl Hines (1903-1983)

Hines made the piano heard over a band by playing melodies in octaves and tremolos, a “trumpet style” Louis Armstrong recognized as close to his own. He recorded with Armstrong in 1928, then led a big band at Chicago’s Grand Terrace Cafe for 12 years, and in the early 1940s his band included Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Ellington later said that “the seeds of bop were in Earl Hines’s piano style.”

Start with: “West End Blues” (Okeh, 1928) with Armstrong, and their duet “Weather Bird.”

3. Fats Waller (1904-1943)

Waller learned Harlem stride from James P. Johnson, who began teaching him when he was 16, and gave it a fuller tone and a wider dynamic range. He wrote “Ain’t Misbehavin'” and “Honeysuckle Rose” (both 1929) and was the first significant jazz organist. RCA Victor marketed him as a comedian, which has drawn attention away from his playing, but Art Tatum named Waller as his biggest influence.

Start with: the solo pieces “Handful of Keys” and “Smashing Thirds,” then his mid-1930s Victor sides with Fats Waller and His Rhythm.

4. Art Tatum (1909-1956)

Tatum was nearly blind, yet he set a standard of speed, reharmonization and control that still holds. A Harlem cutting contest against Johnson, Waller and Willie “The Lion” Smith in the early 1930s made him New York’s leading jazz pianist, and Waller once greeted him at a club with: “I only play the piano, but tonight God is in the house.” From late 1953 producer Norman Granz recorded 124 solo pieces with him.

Start with: the Granz solo sessions, first issued on Clef as The Genius of Art Tatum, and the Grammy-winning God Is in the House (1940-41).

5. Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981)

Williams was pianist and arranger for Andy Kirk’s Twelve Clouds of Joy and wrote for Ellington and Benny Goodman, who got her “Roll ‘Em” in 1937. In the 1940s she mentored Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. Later she turned to sacred music; in 1975 her Mary Lou’s Mass made her the first jazz musician to play at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

Start with: Zodiac Suite (1945) and Zoning (Mary Records, 1974).

6. Thelonious Monk (1917-1982)

Monk was the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, where bebop took shape, but he sounded like no one else: flat ninths and fifths, whole-tone runs, sudden silences and a percussive attack. For years his records sold poorly. Yet “‘Round Midnight,” “Blue Monk,” “Straight, No Chaser” and “Ruby, My Dear” are standards, and by 2009 he was the second most recorded jazz composer after Ellington.

Start with: Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1 (Blue Note, 1951) and Monk’s Dream (Columbia, 1963), the best-selling album of his lifetime.

7. Dave Brubeck (1920-2012)

Brubeck studied composition with Darius Milhaud, and his quartet with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond took jazz to college campuses in the 1950s. In 1954 he was the second jazz musician on the cover of Time, after Louis Armstrong. Time Out built an album on unusual meters, including 5/4 in Desmond’s “Take Five” and 9/8 in “Blue Rondo à la Turk,” and became the first jazz album to sell a million copies; it is also in our ranking of the best jazz albums.

Start with: Time Out (Columbia, 1959).

8. Erroll Garner (1921-1977)

Garner was self-taught and never learned to read music, but he could play much of a classical recital from memory after one hearing. His right hand lagged just behind the beat while the left strummed steady chords, a tension that became his signature. He wrote “Misty” in 1954. Concert by the Sea, taped at Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1955 only because a radio engineer happened to be recording, sold more than a million dollars’ worth of copies by 1958.

Start with: Concert by the Sea (Columbia, 1955).

9. Bud Powell (1924-1966)

Powell was called the Charlie Parker of the piano. His right hand played fast, horn-like single-note lines while his left dropped stride for short punctuating chords, the layout most bebop and later pianists adopted, and Bill Evans named him his greatest influence. A 1945 beating by railroad police was followed by years in psychiatric hospitals. He is the pianist on Jazz at Massey Hall (1953) with Parker, Gillespie, Mingus and Roach.

Start with: The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1 (Blue Note), 1949 and 1951 sessions that include his “Un Poco Loco.”

10. Oscar Peterson (1925-2007)

Born in Montreal and classically trained, Peterson built on Teddy Wilson, Nat King Cole and Art Tatum, released more than 200 recordings and won eight Grammys. Duke Ellington called him the “Maharaja of the keyboard.” Peterson thought his 1953-1958 trio with bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis was his most stimulating group; drummer Ed Thigpen replaced Ellis. A 1993 stroke weakened his left hand, but he kept performing.

Start with: Night Train (Verve, 1963) with Brown and Thigpen, which includes “Hymn to Freedom.”

11. Horace Silver (1928-2014)

Silver steered bebop toward melody, blues and gospel and helped create hard bop, with clean, often humorous right-hand lines over a rumbling left hand. He co-led the first Jazz Messengers with Art Blakey, scoring his first hit with “The Preacher,” and in 1956 formed a quintet of trumpet, tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums, the line-up that became the standard small jazz group. He recorded for Blue Note for 25 years.

Start with: Song for My Father (Blue Note, 1965), his most successful album.

12. Bill Evans (1929-1980)

Evans changed jazz piano harmony. He often left the root to the bassist and colored his chords with ninths and thirteenths, the basis of what is now taught as rootless voicings. He played on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue (1959) and wrote its liner notes. His trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian (1959-1961) is regarded as a model for the modern piano trio; LaFaro died less than two weeks after their June 1961 Village Vanguard run.

Start with: Waltz for Debby (Riverside, 1962), recorded live at the Vanguard in 1961.

13. Ahmad Jamal (1930-2023)

Jamal used space the way others used notes, with long rests, understatement and repeated vamps. Some critics called it cocktail piano, but Miles Davis praised his “concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement,” and played Jamal tunes such as “Ahmad’s Blues.” At the Pershing: But Not for Me, recorded in a Chicago hotel lounge in 1958, stayed on Billboard‘s album charts for more than two years. Jamal was named an NEA Jazz Master in 1994.

Start with: At the Pershing: But Not for Me (Argo, 1958), with his “Poinciana.”

14. Wynton Kelly (1931-1971)

Kelly was one of the most sought-after accompanists in jazz. Born in Brooklyn to Jamaican parents, he backed Dinah Washington and Dizzy Gillespie before joining Miles Davis in 1959, and on Kind of Blue he replaced Bill Evans for the blues “Freddie Freeloader.” His later trio with Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb backed Wes Montgomery on Smokin’ at the Half Note (Verve, 1965). Chick Corea and Brad Mehldau have cited him as an influence.

Start with: Kelly Blue (Riverside, 1959).

15. McCoy Tyner (1938-2020)

Tyner was the pianist in John Coltrane’s quartet from 1960 to 1965, and his chords voiced in fourths, heavy left hand and pentatonic runs influenced Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Kenny Barron. After leaving Coltrane he found so little work that he looked into driving a taxi, until a run of Blue Note albums from 1967 established him as a leader. He was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2002 and won five Grammys.

Start with: The Real McCoy (Blue Note, 1967) with Joe Henderson, Ron Carter and Elvin Jones, then Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1965).

16. Herbie Hancock (born 1940)

Hancock joined Miles Davis’s quintet in 1963, at 23, and helped redefine what a rhythm section could do. His “Maiden Voyage,” “Cantaloupe Island” and “Watermelon Man” became standards. In the 1970s he turned to synthesizers and funk: Head Hunters (Columbia, 1973) reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200, and “Rockit” (1983) was an early jazz and hip-hop hit. He has won 14 Grammys, including Album of the Year for River: The Joni Letters.

Start with: Maiden Voyage (Blue Note, 1965), then Head Hunters.

17. Chick Corea (1941-2021)

Corea moved easily between styles. He played electric piano on Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, co-founded the quartet Circle with Anthony Braxton, then led Return to Forever, whose Light as a Feather (1973) introduced his “Spain.” “Spain,” “500 Miles High,” “La Fiesta” and “Windows” are standards. He won 29 Grammys.

Start with: Now He Sings, Now He Sobs (Solid State, 1968), a trio with Miroslav Vitouš and Roy Haynes.

18. Keith Jarrett (born 1945)

After stints with Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis, Jarrett made his name with fully improvised solo concerts. The Köln Concert was recorded in Cologne in January 1975 on a small rehearsal piano in poor condition after the hall set out the wrong instrument, and it became the best-selling solo album in jazz, with sales of around four million. His Standards Trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette lasted from 1983 to 2014. Two strokes in 2018 left him unable to perform.

Start with: The Köln Concert (ECM, 1975).

19. Brad Mehldau (born 1970)

Mehldau often plays a separate melody in each hand, improvising in counterpoint. His trio with bassist Larry Grenadier, formed in 1994, was among the first to bring rock and pop songs into the jazz repertoire without making them sound trivial, above all on the Art of the Trio albums for Warner Bros. He won the DownBeat readers poll for piano seven times between 1999 and 2012.

Start with: Songs: The Art of the Trio Volume Three (Warner Bros., 1998), with Radiohead’s “Exit Music (For a Film)” and Nick Drake’s “River Man.”

20. Robert Glasper (born 1978)

Glasper, from Houston, debuted on Blue Note as an acoustic trio pianist with Canvas (2005), then formed the Robert Glasper Experiment to bring jazz harmony into R&B and hip-hop. Black Radio (2012), with Erykah Badu, Bilal and others, reached No. 15 on the Billboard 200 and won the Grammy for Best R&B Album. He played keyboards on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) and has won five Grammys.

Start with: Black Radio (Blue Note, 2012).

More Jazz Pianists Worth Hearing

Twenty names leave out many essential players: James P. Johnson (1894-1955), whose 1921 “Carolina Shout” became the test piece for stride pianists; Teddy Wilson (1912-1986), who defined swing piano in Benny Goodman’s trio; and Cedar Walton (1934-2013), a Jazz Messengers alumnus who wrote “Bolivia” and “Mode for Joe.”

Women Who Shaped Jazz Piano

Beyond Mary Lou Williams, three women belong in any account of the instrument. Hazel Scott (1920-1981), born in Trinidad and a Juilliard scholarship student at eight, swung the classics at Café Society and in 1950 became the first Black American to host her own US television series. Marian McPartland (1918-2013) hosted NPR’s Piano Jazz from 1978 to 2011, playing with guests who included Williams herself. Alice Coltrane (1937-2007) studied with Bud Powell in Paris, replaced McCoy Tyner in John Coltrane’s band in 1966 and recorded Journey in Satchidananda (Impulse!, 1971) on piano and harp.

Modern Jazz Pianists to Hear Now

Hiromi (born 1979), from Japan, was mentored by Ahmad Jamal at Berklee and now leads the band Sonicwonder. Vijay Iyer (born 1971), a MacArthur Fellow who teaches at Harvard, was Artist of the Year and Pianist of the Year in the 2012 DownBeat critics poll. Sullivan Fortner (born 1986), Roy Hargrove’s pianist from 2010 to 2017, made the duo album The Window (2018) with Cécile McLorin Salvant and won the 2026 Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. Christian Sands (born 1989) came up in Christian McBride’s band Inside Straight, and Cory Henry (born 1987), pianist and organist, left Snarky Puppy in 2018 to lead his own band.

Where to Hear Jazz Pianists in New York

Much of this history happened in New York: Monk at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, Evans’s 1961 trio at the Village Vanguard, where Mehldau has also recorded, and McPartland at the Hickory House from 1952 to 1962. Since 2018 Glasper has played a month-long residency at the Blue Note every October. For current venues, see our guide to the best jazz clubs in NYC.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is considered the greatest jazz pianist of all time?

There is no single answer, but Art Tatum is the pianist other pianists measured themselves against; Teddy Wilson said Tatum “was the master of all of us.” For harmony the usual reference point is Bill Evans, for composition Thelonious Monk.

Who are the best modern jazz pianists?

Among active players, Brad Mehldau, Robert Glasper, Vijay Iyer and Hiromi have the highest profiles, followed by Sullivan Fortner, Christian Sands and Cory Henry. Herbie Hancock, born in 1940, still teaches at UCLA; Keith Jarrett has not performed since his strokes in 2018.

Which jazz piano album should a beginner start with?

Dave Brubeck’s Time Out (1959) and Ahmad Jamal’s At the Pershing: But Not for Me (1958) are the easiest ways in: melodic, rhythmically clear and full of space. Then try Erroll Garner’s Concert by the Sea (1955) and Bill Evans’s Waltz for Debby.