Obituary News

Pink Floyd Member Richard Wright Dies at Age 65

Source: Michael Ricci
September 15, 2008

A Pink Floyd spokesman says founding member Richard Wright has died. He was 65. Wright died today after a battle with cancer at his home in Britain.

His family did not want to give more details about his death. The spokesman is Doug Wright, who is not related to the artist. Richard Wright met Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and Nick Mason at college and joined their early band Sigma 6.

Sigma 6 eventually became Pink Floyd and Wright wrote ...

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Bheki Mseleku: Sa Jazz Pianist Found Fame in Europe

Source: All About Jazz
September 14, 2008

The death this week of an accomplished jazz musician has highlighted how South Africans tend to overlook local talent. Friends and family say Bheki Mseleku received greater recognition in Europe and the US than at home. He won awards overseas, but could not get a decent gig at home. He had to return to Europe to continue with his musical career. Durban-born Mseleku - a pianist, guitarist, saxophonist, vocalist and composer - died on Tuesday in London, where he had ...

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Jazz Maestro Bheki Mseleku Dies

Source: All About Jazz
September 11, 2008

RENOWNED jazz musician Bheki Mseleku has died at the age of 53 after a long battle with diabetes. “He was a supremely talented creative visionary," Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan said. Jordan said the KwaZulu-Natal-born “piano maestro" died in the U K on Monday. Jordan said Mseleku had been living in the UK and seemed to have disappeared from the live- music scene in South Africa. Born in Lamontville, KwaZulu- Natal, Mseleku was from an artistic family, which took ...

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Geo Voumard, a Founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, Dies at 87

Source: Michael Ricci
September 9, 2008

GENEVA Geo Voumard, a Swiss jazz pianist who was one of the founders of the Montreux Jazz Festival, died Wednesday. He was 87.

Mr. Voumard founded the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1967 with Claude Nobs and Rene Langel. He also won the first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956 with the song “Refrain," written with Emile Gardaz.

Born on Dec. 2, 1920, in the northwest Switzerland town of Biel, Mr. Voumard studied architecture before starting his musical career. He ...

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BJ Papa: North Beach loses a jazzman, and a friend

Source: All About Jazz
September 5, 2008

B.J. Papa died on Monday. I'm not sure what he died of and I don't know how old he was -- somewhere north of 70, I'm sure. I heard he died in his sleep. I hope so. Let the obit pages take care of the details. He'd been feeling under the weather lately but said he was on the mend. Now he's dead and all I know is that a little piece of old North Beach died with him. And ...

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Arne Domnerus

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
September 5, 2008

The list of veterans of the glory days of modern jazz in Sweden grew significantly shorter on Tuesday with the death of Arne Domnerus at the age of eighty-three. The alto saxophonist and clarinetist came to popular attention in the late 1940s and early 1950s as one of the most adroit disciples of Charlie Parker and Lee Konitz. Within a few years, his own personality emerged and he distinguished himself as a soloist immediately recognizable for the individuality and warmth of ...

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The Caymmi Afflatus from Dorival to Dori

Source: All About Jazz
September 4, 2008

As a musician of international renown, Dori Caymmi has firmly established himself as an artist of substantial influence in both the Brazilian and global community. The influences behind this Brazilian composer is artfully demonstrated in his music; an amalgam of jazz styles and impressions that contribute to Mr. Caymmi's work like facets in a diamond. Along with Miles Davis and Antonio Carlos Jobim, one such major influence is his late father Dorival Caymmi, another widely acclaimed composer whose own work ...

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Singer Clea Bradford Dies at Age 67

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
September 4, 2008

Clea Bradford, a jazz singer who spent her formative years in St. Louis, has died of complications from breast cancer at age 67 in a Washington, DC hospital.Born in Mississippi and raised in Charleston, MO and St. Louis, Bradford (pictured) was a protege of trumpeter Clark Terry and saxophonist Jimmy Forrest who in the 1960s gigged frequently in the St. Louis area with Quartette Tres Bien. She later toured the Playboy Club circuit, using the Gateway City as ...

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