Biography

For approximately fifty-four years (from 1956 until his eviction, as one of the last tenants, in June 2010), Shirley lived in an an apartment in the Carnegie Hall Studio Towers directly above Carnegie Hall in Manhattan. The 165 apartments, of different sizes and configurations, were called studios not because they were residential one-room studio apartments (although some of them were one room), but because they were intended to be artist studios, for artists of many disciplines, from pianists to photographers, theater actors to theme composers, ballet dancers to biographers, architects to actors on screen, and every other kind of "artist" in the broadest sense of the term. When Shirley first moved into the Carnegie Studio Towers, he lived in an eighth-floor apartment, later moving to apartment #130 (one of the largest, if not THE largest apartment of all the Carnegie Studios) on the thirteenth floor, which had 34-foot-high ceilings. Out of all the 114 year (1896-2010) roster of studio tenants, many of whom performed in one of the three Carnegie venues, only Shirley and Leonard Bernstein, ever performed actual solo concerts at Carnegie Hall. Shirley only moved out of the Carnegie Hall Studio Towers reluctantly, when the City of New York (as owner of Carnegie Hall) through it's not-for-profit operating manager, Carnegie Hall Corporation, evicted all of the remaining studio tenants in order to reconfigure the space into offices, rehearsal studios, museum/exhibit space, Carnegie historical archives, teaching and tutoring rooms, etc. On the day of his final move-out, 57th Street had to be closed in order for a crane to be brought in to remove Shirley's full sized Steinway Concert Grand piano from #130 and lower it to street level to be transported to Shirley's new home, approximately two blocks away, where he could still see his beloved Carnegie Hall from his apartment window.

Shirley did not like to be called "Don," he much preferred to be called Donald, but early in his career, a talent agent advised him that as a black performer, he would be better noticed as Don Shirley than as Donald Shirley. He took the advice, but later regretted it.

After the death of Duke Ellington in 1974, Shirley composed a tribute to his friend, "Divertimento for Duke by Don," also sometimes known as "D, D & D" or Triple D.

Shirley was of Jamaican descent. Both of his parents were immigrants to the USA from the island country of Jamaica, making Donald Walbridge Shirley a first generation American born in Pensacola, Florida, USA.

Don Shirley was known as Dr. Donald Shirley, as a result of his degrees. On the occasion he was introduced to a young child as a "Doctor of Music," the child replied, "What's the matter--is music sick?" In response Shirley composed "Atonal Ostinato Blues in B Flat," a piece that offered a playful jab at jazz artists whose classical-minded ambitions, in his view, outstripped their compositional abilities.