Jazz musicians silenced by coronavirus, Chapter 1 (updated 1-8-2022)

Here's a chronological listing of jazz-related deaths from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), updated as we receive them. Our profound sympathies to their families, friends and fans as we remember the musical legacies they have given us.

• Argentina-born jazz saxophonist Marcelo Peralta, died in Madrid on March 10. He was 59. Peralta moved to Spain in 1996. 
• Congolese singer Arlus Mabele, the king of soukous, an Afro-Caribbean dance rhythm similar to the rhumba, died March 19 in Paris. He was 66. 
• New York City-based pianist,composer writer and educator Mike Longo died on March 21, two days after his 81st birthday. He was the musical director and pianist in trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie’s band for many years.
• Camaroon-born Afro-jazz saxophonist, arranger, conductor and former jazz club operator (Leopoldville, Belgian Congo's Tam-Tam) Manu Dibango. He died March 24 in Paris. He was 86. He worked extensively in France and Belgium.
• Swedish trombonist Olle Holmquist died March 25. He was 83. 
• Denver jazz saxophonist Freddy Rodriguez Sr. died March 25. He was 89.
• Los Angeles-based saxophonist and big-band leader Pat Longo died on March 26. He was 90. 
• Drummer, bandleader and educator Dick Bennett (born John Beneduce) died March 26 in New York. He was 85. After performing with trumpeter Leonard Sues quintet, he led the Souvenirs Orchestra and the M.A.S. Swing big band. He taught at the Gene Krupa/Cozy Cole drum studios before opening his own studio.
• Jazz, blues, gospel and rock guitarist Wayman Henry, 66, died March 27. He lived in Mobile, Alabama.

  

  Wallace Roney, 2009

• Pianist Joseph Fogarty of Huntington, Long Island, NY, died March 29. He was 77.
• Trumpeter Wallace Roney, bandleader and Miles Davis protege, died March 31. He was 59.
• Bassist Alex Layne, a longtime fixture on the NYC jazz scene, died March 31. He was 80.
• Pianist, composer, educator and NEA Jazz Master Ellis Marsalis, patriarch of the Marsalis family of jazz musicians, died April 1. He was 85. 
• Clarinetist and French Quarter Festival board member Alex Lewis died April 1 in New Orleans. He was 75.
• Guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, the father of singer-guitarist John Pizzarelli and bassist Martin Pizzarelli, died April 1 in New Jersey. He was 94.

  

  Bucky Pizzarelli, 2009

• Drummer Lysa (Lee-sa) Dawn Robinson, who played both jazz and rock, died April 2 at Lankenau Medical Center near Philadelphia. She was 55. Among others, she played with Pink and Billy Paul, as well as Philly jazz guitarist Monnette Sudler.
• Violist Vincent Lionti died April 4. He was 60. A NY Metropolitan Opera orchestra member for more than 30 years and Westchester Youth Orchestra conductor, he performed on jazz recordings by singers Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, Harry Connick Jr., Jane Monheit, Aaron Neville and Steve Tyrell, bassist Charlie Haden, pianist Steve Kuhn and saxophonist Joshua Redman.
• Singer Jan Fourney died at her home in New York City on April 6. She was 66.  
• Pianist, producer and composer David Horowitz died April 6 in New York. He was 77. In addition to leading his own quintet, he performed with the Gil Evans Orchestra, drummer Tony Williams’ Lifetime band and folksinger Tom Paxton.
• Music producer Hal Willner died on April 7, one day after his 64^th birthday. He was a long-time sketch music producer for “Saturday Night Live,” music coordinator for the Jools Holland and David Sanborn-hosted “Night Music” TV series, which ran from 1988-90, and produced a wide range of recordings and tribute compilations, including jazz. 

  

  Woody Allen, Eddy Davis, 2008

• Banjo player, singer and composer Eddy Davis, leader of Woody Allen’s jazz band since the 1980s, died April 7. He was 79.
• Pianist and educator Dave Roper of Bethlehem PA died April 8. He was 82. 
• British clarinetist, bandleader and writer Dick Laurie passed away on April 10. Laurie and his Elastic Band played regularly on Sunday afternoons at The Half Moon on banks of the Thames in London's Putney neighborhood.  
• Sam Hargress Jr., owner of Harlem's Paris Blues jazz club, died April 10, one day after his 84th birthday.

• 
  

  Alto saxophonist Lee Konitz died April 15 in New York City. He was 92. His career, which began in the mid-1940s, coursed through bebop, cool jazz and avant-garde jazz.
  

  

  Lee Konitz, 2014

• Boston-area bassist Ray Rose died April 15. He was 93.
• Bassist, violinist and poet Henry Grimes died April 15 in New York. He was 84. He returned to the jazz scene in 2004 after a 35-year absence during which he was living in obscurity in Los Angeles. 
• Saxophonist Giuseppi Logan died April 17 in New York. He was 84. He returned to New York's free-jazz jazz scene in 2009 after an absence of nearly 40 years. 
• Reed player and educator Paul Shelden, who worked in both classical and jazz genres, died April 17 in Hewlett NY. He was 79.  Principally a clarinetist, the former Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music director had performed with Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, the Guy Lombardo Orchestra, and Blood, Sweat & Tears.
• French guitarist Jacques Pellen died April 21. He was 63. Born and based in Brittany, he founded the late 1980s collective Celtic Procession. He also worked with flutist Sylvain Barou, percussionist Trilok Gurtu and trumpeter Paolo Fresu, among many others.
   
  Here are links to Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.
  

Albums that had significant impacts on my thirst for jazz

In recent days, Facebook has been bubbling with users’ lists of celebrities or musicians that they have met or performed with, with one exception. Then it’s up to the followers to figure out which one was untrue. This is an interesting sheltering-in-place pastime.

Thanks to my parents’ modest record collection, there was some music by jazz artists in our upstate New York home when I was growing up in the 1950s and early ‘60s. But these were considered more popular music of the day, not so much with a genre tag. Sprinkled among platters by varied popular vocalists and instrumentalists, I found records by Nat King Cole, Al Hirt and pianist Eddie Heywood. They likely set the tone for my full-blown jazz appreciation that began blossoming in college, from 1967-1971, and intensified with the Newport Jazz Festival's return to its Rhode Island roots in 1981.

There is no guessing game here. I’m just listing the recordings that had a profound, early impact on my appreciation of jazz. My ears heard most of them for the first time in the early 1970s through the mid-1980s. 

These ten are listed alphabetically by artist. Call them taste shapers.

• Cannonball Adderley, Somethin’ Else (Blue Note)
  

• Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain (Columbia)

• Duke Ellington, Ellington at Newport (Columbia)
  

• Bill Evans, New Jazz Conceptions (Riverside)

• Dizzy Gillespie, Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac (Impulse!)

• Ahmad Jamal, The Awakening (Impulse!)

• Junior Mance, With a Lotta Help From My Friends (Atlantic)

• Chuck Mangione, Friends and Love (Mercury)

• Dave McKenna, Left Handed Complement (Concord Jazz)

• Helen Merrill, Helen Merrill (with Clifford Brown) (EmArcy)

This is a great time to revisit your own influences, be they recordings, stunning concert performances that you recall as jazz epiphanies, or crossing paths with favorite artists.

CDs of Note – Short Takes

Taking a closer look at CDs by Sinne Eeg, Funk Shui NYC, J.C. Hopkins, and Jeff Rupert & George Garzone ….

The Satchmo Award legacy continues

The 40^th annual Sarasota Jazz Festival scrapped all of its main-stage concerts earlier this month because of pandemic concerns, but managed to continue a tradition that began in 1987. That tradition is the presentation of the annual Satchmo Award, which the Jazz Club of Sarasota gives to a distinguished person in the jazz community in recognition of “unique and enduring contributions to the living history of jazz.” In other words: sort of a lifetime achievement award.

Rachel Dombers*

This year’s honor was given to Rachel Domber and her late husband, Mat, who founder Clearwater-based Arbors Records. Since they began the label in 1989, they have produced more than 400 recordings. They began with a focus on traditional and classic jazz, but broadened the Arbors scope to include more contemporary and swing players, including a variety of today’s rising stars.

The presentation usually is part of the festival’s Saturday night main stage event. This year, the recognition came at a Thursday, March 12 reception that had been planned to precede that night’s just-canceled concert.  

Jazz club president Ed Linehan praised the Dombers for their impact on jazz. “Through their efforts, Arbors has produced hundreds of albums since 1989, representing many classic styles of Jazz. The Arbors catalog reads like a Who’s Who of American jazz of the last half century, including recordings by our own Dick Hyman - an NEA Jazz Master - and (clarinetist and current festival musical director) Ken Peplowski.”

The ups and downs in times of uncertainty

Jazz musicians are used to the unexpected and uncertain. In some respects, they've thrived on it - through the art of improvisation that is the essence of jazz. Pianist Cyrus Chestnut calls improvisation "composition at a rapid pace with no erasers."

But the things we're all going through now as we hunker down amid the global spread of COVID-19 is rewriting things - without erasers - to a degree we've never seen. With self-quarantines, school and college closings, nightclub closings, restaurant retrenchings, concert and festival postponements or cancellations for who knows how long, one thing is apparent.

The only certainty we have right now  is uncertainty. Musicians, many of whom live a gig-to-gig existence unless they have teaching income, are feeling the pinch of concert and club and restaurant gig cancellations. 

Figueiredo delights in two musical contexts

Diego Figueiredo

Brazilian guitarist Diego Figueiredo brought his acoustic guitar and deep musical savvy to Port Charlotte FL on Monday, March 9 in his first visit to the Charlotte County Jazz Society stage. He delivered mightily in two different contexts: a solo guitar set and a closing set in a swinging trio.

Figueiredo, 39, blended Brazilian, Latin and standard fare with ease throughout the night. There were several sambas, a few of Antonio Carlos Jobim's classic bossa novas and even the most famous Brazilian waltz, Dilermande Reis' "If She was Asks." 

Everything he chose to play was imbued with eye-popping technique delivered with his finger-pick style that combines melody and bass lines, and percussive accents from his left hand sliding down the fret board. His right hand is something else, with his extra-long fingernails being the picks.

An all-star blast of an evening

You never know what surprises you're in for when the Dan Miller-Lew Del Gatto quartet holds musical court on Thursday nights at The Barrel Room in downtown Fort Myers FL. It's always billed as a quartet gig - and sometimes that's the case. But on Thursday, February 27, it started out as a sextet and wound up something quite different a few tunes later.

Krakowsky, Vigilante, Del Gatto

Tenor saxophonist Gerald Augustin, a Fort Myers native who divides his time between the City of Palms and New Orleans, was in the mix. So was tenor player Arnie Krakowsky, a Boston-based jazz veteran, who was vacationing in the area. 
  
The evening began with trumpeter Miller, the three tenors plus bassist Dan Heck and drummer Tony Vigilante. The contrast between the saxophonists was interesting. "Saturday Night Live" Band alum Del Gatto never overplays. Every note has meaning, and his solos are wonderful little stories. Krakowsky, an Artie Shaw Orchestra veteran, firmly sits in the swing tenor tradition. Augustin is more influenced by John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, and has an edgier sound.

Looking ahead: Southwest Florida jazz preview

Here is a rundown of noteworthy jazz events, principally in the Sarasota to Naples territory, from now through March, as the 2019-20 concert season continues…. Note that some in late March may have been canceled due to COVID-19 concerns.

February

A Brazilian's musical travelog

Brazilian acoustic guitar wizard Diego Figueiredo treated a full-house in Sarasota on Sunday, February 23 to spellbinding technique and an around-the-world travelog of places he's been that have inspired his music.

Diego Figueiredo

Figueiredo, 39, has been playing guitar since age 6. He has mastered the acoustic instrument with blended classical and jazz techniques into something distinctly Diego. At one point, he sounded like two different guitarists performing the same song together as he shifted between - and blended - arpeggio and tremolo styles.

His solo guitar program included an Antonio Carlos Jobim medley playing tribute to the father of the bossa nova, and snippets of music and styles from around the world - including France, Spain, Cuba, Mexico, Japan, Turkey and the United States.

Swing, swing, swing indeed

Pianist Roy Gerson couldn't have picked a more appropriate name for his band. The Swinget says it all, no matter how many musicians he has along for the fun ride on a given night.

He brought his full eight-member band to Port Charlotte on Monday, February 10 for a Charlotte County Jazz Society concert. The band dug into a strong blend of material from the Great American Songbook, vintage swing jazz, a bit of boogie woogie, the blues, the heartache lyrics of Billie Holiday and even some R&B.

Roy Gerson

The band included trumpeters Dan Miller and Randy Sandke, trombonist Herb Bruce, guitarist Frank Portolese, bassist Don Mopsick, drummer Tony Vigilante and singer Corrine Manning. Gerson and Manning moved to Naples three years ago from New York City.

A Swift star on the rise

Veronica Swift

Singer Veronica Swift, fresh off a week aboard The Jazz Cruise, brought her musical journey back to Sarasota on Sunday, February 9. Anyone who has heard her knows well that she is graced with an abundance of musical talents. 

She sings. She scats with intelligence and care. She emulates other instruments with uncanny ease. She's a fine lyricist and composer. And she has mastered the difficult art of writing and delivering vocalese - putting words to improvised horn solos. 

All of that was on display at her annual Florida swing with tenor saxophonist Jeff Rupert's quartet. It included Richard Drexler on piano, Marty Morell on drums and Ben Kramer on bass.