Home » Jazz News
Obituary News
Timely announcements covering new album releases, tours, concert series, special events, job postings, crowdfunding campaigns and more. You can find more news by searching our website, viewing our news stream, seeing what's trending or reading our blog posts. Subscribe to our news RSS feed and/or embed AAJ news content on your website or blog. Learn about our news service here. Submit news here.
Graham Collier, 1937-2011
Source:
All About Jazz
Written by Duncan Heining Composer, bassist and bandleader Graham Collier left town on Friday, September 9,, 2011. He was holidaying with his partner, John, in Crete, when a sudden heart failure took his final breath. It was quick, relatively painless but unexpected. We all felt sure Graham had too much sparkle, too much music in him to go so soon. His career, indeed his life, was shaped by music. Collier grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire—reason enough to leave home at ...
Continue Reading
Band leader Edmundo Ros dies, 100
Source:
Lasse Stein Holst
Band leader Edmundo Ros, the man credited with popularising Latin American music in the UK, has died at the age of 100. His death was confirmed by showbusiness charity the Grand Order of Water Rats. Secretary John Adrian said: “He died last night peacefully at his home in Spain, two months short of his 101st birthday." Ros received an OBE for services to entertainment in the New Year Honours of 2000. Royal rumba success According to the Official Edmundo Ros ...
Continue Reading
Pete Rugolo (1915-2011)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Pete Rugolo, a jazz-classical maverick in the late-1940s andarchitect of a brassy, West Coast orchestral sound that helped establish Stan Kenton and the music of television and the movies in the 1950s and 1960s, died on October 16 in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He was 95. [Photo by William P. Gottlieb] Starting in 1944 with his first arrangement for Kenton (Opus a Dollar Three Eighty), Rugolo's music was as sweeping and as grand as California's panoramic landscape—and at times just as ...
Continue Reading
Pete Rugolo, 1915-2011
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Pete Rugolo has died in Los Angeles at the age of 95. Rugolo's composing and arranging, particularly for the Stan Kenton Orchestra,had much to do in the 1940s and '50s with the creation of what came to be called progressive jazz. As a discoverer of talent and as a producer, he was responsible for recording a number of artists including Peggy Lee and Mel Tormé. He produced the seminally influential Miles Davis Birth of the Cool sessions of 1949 and ...
Continue Reading
Jeff Sultanof on Pete Rugolo
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Shortly after Pete Rugolo died this week, Jeff Sultanof offered to contribute a piece putting Rugolo's work in perspective. I was delighted to accept and flattered that he considered Rifftides the proper place for his essay. Jeff is a native of New York City, where he lives and works. He is a composer, orchestrator, editor, educator and researcher greatly admired in the community of professional musicians, critics and academics. He has analyzed, studied, edited and taught the music of Gerald ...
Continue Reading
Micky Correa - Big Band Leader - Bombay Jazzman 1913-2011
Source:
Susheel Kurien
Micky Correa- The Sultan of Swing from Bombay, India passed away on September 22nd 2011 He would have turned 98 on September 26. Micky's career was almost legendary, with a longevity that is cherished both by his fans in Bombay, and those who got to know him from visits to the Taj Hotel, where he was resident for almost 25 years. His musicianship continued well into his life, maintaining a loyal student following through the last months of his life. ...
Continue Reading
Frank Driggs, 1930-2011
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Frank Driggs, a tireless jazz researcher and historian who collected photographs familiar to millions, died this week at the age of 81. In the1950s as a producer for Columbia Records, Driggs oversaw the organizing and reissuing of historically important recordings by Billie Holiday, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington and Gene Krupa. In 1991, he won a Grammy for Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings, the recorded work of the seminal blues singer and guitarist. He began documenting the history of jazz at ...
Continue Reading
Jazz Trumpeter and Mentor Chuck Miller Dies
Source:
Donald Harris
The Jazz World Says Farewell To Another Music Legend Former UNO Adjunct Professor of Black Studies Charles (Chuck) Miller, widely respected for his musical talent and dedication to Omaha's “at risk" youth, passed away on Saturday, September 17, at a local hospital. Chuck Miller was mentor to many of Omaha's finest musicians. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Omaha Black Music and Community Hall of Fame in July, for his many musical accomplishments and community work. Music ...
Continue Reading
