Category: Obituaries

Thrilling American jazz drummer, pianist and composer who played with some of the genre’s greatest stars In improvisational music, ungoverned by conductors or sacrosanct scores, and given to abrupt shifts […]

With a complex playing style that was nevertheless generous towards other musicians, the US musician was in a category all of his own • Jack DeJohnette dies aged 83 My […]

Drummer played on Bitches Brew and other landmark recordings, as well as making numerous albums as a bandleader Jack DeJohnette, the jazz drummer celebrated as one of the genre’s true […]

Jazz singer with an unorthodox vocal style who first toured the UK and Europe in the 1960s As a girl growing up in Detroit, the jazz singer Sheila Jordan, who […]

The Puerto Rican New Yorker pianist, who has died aged 88, radiated pure joy as he played – never resting on his laurels as he went from jazz to salsa […]

The pianist, composer and bandleader was the first Latino to win a Grammy and would win seven more over a career that spanned nearly 40 albums Eddie Palmieri, the avant-garde […]

Musician who helped to create ‘smooth jazz’, an easy-listening sound that won him two Grammy awards While the arrival of rock’n’roll in the 1950s helped deflate the popularity that jazz […]

Celebrated flugelhorn and trumpet player released over 30 albums and sold millions of records throughout his career The Grammy-winning jazz musician and composer Chuck Mangione died on Tuesday, according to […]

Ayers’ genre-bending jazz-funk sound produced one fantastic album after another – and then found a new lease of life in hip-hop sampling • Roy Ayers, jazz-funk pioneer behind Everybody Loves […]

Jazz-soul vibraphonist and band leader best known for his laid-back summer track Everybody Loves the Sunshine When Ruby Ayers, a piano teacher, took her five-year-old son Roy to a concert […]