Remembrance 2025: Jim McNeely, Chuck Mangione, Andy Bey, Eddie Palmieri and Hermeto Pascoal

Click the play button to listen

Every year the jazz world loses some major artists and 2025 was no exception.

In this hour, we remember the composer and arranger Jim McNeely, one of the most distinguished large ensemble jazz composers of his generation.

Hermeto Pascoal was a Brazilian artist who defied classification. He became a favorite of audiences around the world, though he was never particularly well known in the US. Known in Brazil as "The Sorcerer" and "The Mad Genius," he wrote more than 2,000 instrumental pieces and had the unique ability to turn everything he touched into music. The jazz world first encountered Pascoal on Miles Davis' 1971 Live-Evil album. Miles once described him as "one of the most important musicians on the planet."

Chuck Mangione found fame and fortune as a pop oriented fluegelhorn musician. He began his career as a jazz musician and was a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers for a short time in the mid-'60s.

The pianist, composer and bandleader Eddie Palmieri, was one of the architects of Afro-Caribbean dance music or salsa, whose career spanned more than 60 years.

Andy Bey was a jazz ballad vocalist, whose voice was described as "midnight-blue bass baritone."

Comments