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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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Ornette Coleman (1930-2015)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Ornette Coleman, whose highly expressive approach to jazz jolted listeners and deeply influenced jazz, rock and funk musicians in the 1960s and beyond, died Thursday morning in Manhattan. He was 85. At about 10 a.m. yesterday, one of my Wall Street Journal editors emailed asking if I could turn around an appreciation for Speakeasy, the paper's online arts section. With two interviews for other stories looming at noon and 2 p.m., I had just a little over an hour to ...
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Ornette Coleman, 1930-2015
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Ornette Coleman, whose forthrightness and conviction helped change the course of jazz, died today in New York. He was 85. To many, the alto saxophonist, composer and bandleader seemed to have come from nowhere, or outer space, when his first albums appeared in the late 1950s. In fact, his style—inevitably called ”iconoclastic” by his early critics, often with a sneer—grew out of Charlie Parker and Texas rhythm and blues. His music fell on some musicians’ closed ears, but to others ...
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Ornette Coleman, Who Widened Jazz and Changed Its Course, Dies at 85
Source:
Michael Ricci
Ornette Coleman, the alto saxophonist and composer who was one of the most powerful and contentious innovators in the history of jazz, died on Thursday morning in Manhattan. He was 85. The cause was cardiac arrest, a representative of the family said. Mr. Coleman widened the options in jazz and helped change its course. Partly through his example in the late 1950s and early ’60s, jazz became less beholden to the rules of harmony and rhythm, and gained more distance ...
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