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Van Alexander (1915-2015)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Van Alexander, a big band arranger and bandleader whose arrangements date back to 1936 and was best known for A-Tisket, a Tasket, a song he co-wrote with Ella Fitzgerald and arranged for Fitzgerald and Chick Webb in 1938, died on July 19 in Los Angeles. He was 100. When I interviewed Van in 2012, he was already in his late 90s but his memory was as sharp as a tack. I reached Van through arranger Johnny Mandel, and Van was ...
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Losses: Rumsey, Alexander, Taylor
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Howard Rumsey, the 1940s Stan Kenton bassist who went on to become a key figure in southern California jazz, died on February 15. He was 97. Although he continued to play the bass, Rumsey became famous as the entrepreneur who led the band at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach south of Los Angeles. The club was at the center of a 1950s west coast jazz movement that gained audiences around the world. Over more than a decade, some of the ...
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Howard Rumsey (1917-2015)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Howard Rumsey, a West Coast jazz bassist who began his recording career in Stan Kenton's orchestra in 1941 and managed the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, Calif., a club that became ground zero for the West Coast jazz sound starting in the early 1950s, died July 15 in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 97. When I interviewed Howard in 2009, it quickly became apparent that the Lighthouse and Howard's Lighthouse All-Stars had paved the way for the airy jazz sound that ...
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Eddy Louiss, 1941-2015
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Organist Eddy Louiss died on June 30 in a Paris hospital. He was 74. His long career included widely praised albums with tenor saxophonist Stan Getz and pianist Michel Petrucciani. Louiss became an organist when he was a member of the vocal group The Double Six Of Paris in the early 1960s. He quickly developed into a virtuoso on the instrument and won the Prix Django Reinhardt of the Academie du Jazz in 1964. Louiss had a long struggle with ...
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New England Conservatory Remembers Gunther Schuller
Source:
Michael Ricci
From the Ground Up and Into the Future... In Memoriam Boston, MA – Gunther Schuller's family, friends, contemporaries, faculty, and students are in mourning over the news of his death June 21, but the trailblazing energy surrounding this man is so great, even his in memoriam feels like a chance for new understandings and transformation. As New England Conservatory President, Gunther Schuller steered NEC through one of the most turbulent and formative decades of American and Conservatory history, beginning with ...
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Gunther Schuller (1925-2015)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Gunther Schuller, a classically trained French hornist, composer and conductor whose passion for jazz motivated him to record with jazz musicians and fuse classical music and jazz into what he would become known as the Third Stream, died Sunday in Boston. He was 89. I interviewed Gunther in 2010 on his jazz experiences. Here are all four parts of that interview combined... JazzWax: Where exactly did you grow up? Gunther Schuller: As a young child, I spent 4½ years in ...
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Farewell To Gunther Schuller
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Gunther Schuller, who was prominent in classical music and stimulated attention to a hybrid movement in jazz, died today in Boston. He was 89. In addition to his authorship of influential modern classical pieces, Schuller in the late 1950s melded jazz and classical influences and came up with a label for it that stuck: Third Stream. In the l960s and l970s he was president of the New England Conservatory. His classical composition “Of Reminiscences and Reflections” won a Pulitzer Prize ...
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Ornette Coleman: 1930-2015
Source:
JazzINK by Andrea Canter
“Coleman was dancing in our heads—harsh yet jubilant, alienated yet benevolent…True, he challenged every pre-conception of Western music... but that was secondary to his magnanimous spirit, his blinding unison of purpose.” —Gary Giddens, Visions of Jazz “Most people think of me only as a saxophonist and as a jazz artist, but I want to be considered as a composer who could cross over all the borders.” —Ornette Coleman The father of “free jazz" and one of the most revolutionary musicians ...
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