Issued on: Modified:
Ahmad Jamal, a towering and influential US jazz pianist, composer and band chief whose profession spanned greater than seven a long time, died at age 92 on Sunday, in keeping with information experiences.
Jamal’s widow Laura Hess-Hey confirmed his loss of life, The Washington Submit reported, whereas his daughter Sumayah Jamal informed The New York Instances the trigger was prostate most cancers. Music information shops in France and Britain additionally reported his loss of life.
Jamal was pals with music greats comparable to Miles Davis, and influenced his work and that of different musicians, together with the pianist McCoy Tyner.
Born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, Jamal transformed to Islam in 1950. He gained myriad awards over the course of his profession, together with France’s prestigious Ordre des Arts and des Lettres in 2007 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.
Jamal was credited with luring a bigger pop viewers to get pleasure from jazz.
His taking part in fashion was described as lean, with The Submit citing his “less-is-more dynamics.” One method he used to nice impact was inserting silence between notes.
The New Yorker, writing final 12 months to mark the discharge of some unissued recordings, stated that within the Fifties “his musical idea was one of many nice improvements of the time, even when its spare, audacious originality was misplaced on many listeners.”
Jamal’s industrial breakthrough was a 1958 album entitled “Ahmad Jamal on the Pershing: However Not for Me.” It stayed on the Billboard journal charts for greater than 100 weeks. The New York Instances stated it grew to become one of many best-selling instrumental information of its time.
Dozens extra adopted in what The Instances referred to as “a catalog sprinkled with gems.”
In his autobiography, Davis the trumpeter wrote of Jamal: “He knocked me out together with his idea of area, his lightness of contact, his understatement, and the way in which he phrased notes and chords and passages.”
In an interview late final 12 months with The Instances, Jamal stated: “I am nonetheless evolving, each time I sit down on the piano.”
“I nonetheless give you some contemporary concepts,” he added.
(AFP)
