Muhal Richard Abrams

Composer, arranger, and pianist Muhal Richard Abrams was largely a self-taught musician who was deeply influenced by the bop innovations of the late <a href="spotify:artist:570vCzcespB48HIQyTbDO6">Bud Powell</a>. Abrams was a beacon in the jazz community as a co-founder (and first president), in 1965, of Chicago's legendary vanguard music institution, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). While Abrams was well known as a mentor to three generations of younger musicians -- born in 1930, he was a decade older than his closest peer in the AACM -- as a bandleader and professor at the Banff Center, Columbia University, Syracuse University, and the BMI Composers' Workshop, he was not always recognized for his substantial contribution as a player and recording artist. Abrams' first gigs were playing the blues, R&B, and hard bop circuit in Chicago and working as a sideman with everyone from <a href="spotify:artist:3NUsiT2JSyaWAnWaXxDzhQ">Dexter Gordon</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:6jrlNnS5B830kpi40j3S6g">Max Roach</a> to <a href="spotify:artist:4EYVgfZJ8wKXWmIvCx3gOY">Ruth Brown</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:0yvEf1tqWWPiZu4ZbjyKGs">Woody Shaw</a>. But Abrams' own recordings revealed his strength as an innovator. His 1967 debut, Levels and Degrees of Light on Chicago's <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Delmark%22">Delmark</a> label, set the course for his own career and that of many of his AACM contemporaries, including <a href="spotify:artist:0bSP8obSwEpc8XEOE7qc63">Henry Threadgill</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:0LTIwNcvI31Zf5wwFVRHyu">the Art Ensemble of Chicago</a>, Leo Smith, and <a href="spotify:artist:3UXq4fckDmcPmleixlrl6i">Anthony Braxton</a>. Abrams was also a conduit for the tradition. Though his music was noted for its vanguard edginess, he nonetheless bridged everything in his playing from boogie-woogie to bebop to free improv, as evidenced by Sightsong and Rejoicing with the Light, both on the <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Black+Saint%22">Black Saint</a> label. As a composer, Abrams moved through the classical tradition as well. Novi, his first symphony for orchestra and jazz quartet, has been performed at various festivals, and <a href="spotify:artist:0M6xcJTswOl2qvExCJhiS3">the Kronos Quartet</a> performed his String Quartet, No. 2. Muhal Richard Abrams died at his home in Manhattan in October 2017; he was 87 years old. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi