Pianist and composer
Ahmad Jamal
, one of the most talented artists in contemporary jazz and a major influence on musicians such as Miles Davis and Bill Evans, passed away on Sunday, April 16, in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts, from cervical cancer. prostate.
The announcement on social networks was made by his friend and his photographer Ernst Gregory.
He was 92 years old
.
Ahmad Jamal was a true innovator within the jazz tradition, but not in the manner of great soloists - although he was an inspired improviser - but as a creator of a unique sound for piano trios.
Indeed, at the beginning of his career, within the bebop era, speed was privileged, so to speak, both in improvisations and supercharged arrangements.
“I believe in improvisation.
All the musicians improvise;
even Bach, Mozart and Beethoven improvised.
Improvisation and freedom are synonymous.
The goal of every musician is to be free, but freedom is rare,” said Jamal.
Ahmad Jamal was a reference for generations of jazz pianists.
Photo Remy Gabalda/AFP
owner of his silences
Jamal added a lot to the musical discourse by
leaving notes out
.
Instead of focusing on the blinding speed of bebop, he emphasized space (silences) and time in his performances.
His field of action was the piano trio
.
“I felt that in modern jazz it was necessary to fill in the musical space and I began to think that better than improvising without stopping, that is, without stopping playing something, was to stay still and transform the space into a structural element”, Jamal confessed in a interview a long time ago.
Less is more
In this way, the pianist
managed to let his music breathe freely
in a relaxed context, with a lot of air and that it became his own style that had a significant number of followers since the mid-fifties.
Ahmad Jamal's style was unusually minimalist.
Photo Remy Gabalda/AFP)
One of his best records was
At The Pershing, But Not For Me
, an album recorded live at Chicago's Pershing Hotel in January 1958. Along with Israel Crosby on double bass and Vernel Fournier on drums.
Jamal somehow revolutionized the art of performance with
an unusual minimalist style
.
Suddenly he emerged from the very heart of the jazz world, a serene art form, conventional in appearance, but with a modern and creative approach.
On that record was the song
Poinciana
, a song with delicate phrasing and an irresistible rhythm, two permanent aspects in Jamal's compositions, which
turned him into a sales star
and overturned that cocktail pianist prejudice that the most closed boppers foisted on him. of those years
The backing of the stars
If this wasn't enough, a substantial endorsement arrived that made the most creative eyes in jazz focus on Jamal.
Trumpeter
Miles Davis
noted that the pianist's music was an inspiration to him and
admitted to "borrowing" some arrangements for his own music
.
Without going too far, the landmark
Kind of Blue
album , released in March 1959, is undoubtedly influenced by Jamal.
Davis was impressed by his rhythmic sense and concept of space and lightness.
Another of the great pianists who took this stylized way of developing the piano trio was
Bill Evans
, a key player in
Kind Of Blue
.
Davis in his autobiography says that the only interlocutor he had about his decision to give his music more space was Bill Evans, an artist who knew Jamal's exquisite music at the end of the fifties.
Even Davis with arrangements by Gil Evans recorded
New Rumba
, by Jamal.
The pianist Ahmad Jamal on stage.
He died at the age of 92.
Photo Remy Gabalda/AFP
Ahmad Jamal made a long tour of North Africa in 1959.
Upon his return to the United States he continued with his shows and recordings and, although there were intermittents in his career, at each return the
quality of his message and rhythmic solidity continued to be present
in his music.
He was also a forerunner in embracing the Muslim faith within jazz
.
After a series of concerts in Detroit, he connected with a Muslim community and changed his baptismal name Frederick Russell Jones to Ahmad Jamal.
Born in Pittsburgh on July 2, 1930, Jamal was a child prodigy;
he started playing the piano at the age of three;
Discovered by his uncle at age seven, he began studying with Mary Cardwell Dawson, founder of the National Negro Opera Company.
Already
in his teens he was an accomplished musician
, he began playing professionally in 1944 and until 2017, when he announced his retirement from the stage after a 67-year career.
He had previously endorsed him, for example, the extraordinary Japanese pianist Hiromi.
He recorded 67 albums, the first of them, in 1955,
Chamber Music of The New Jazz
and the last, in 2019,
Ballads
.
WD
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