Ahmad Jamal, one of the most elegant, eloquent and influential pianists and composers in modern jazz, died on Sunday, his wife, Laura Hess-Hey, and his daughter, Sumayah Jamal, told the Washington …
, one of the most elegant, eloquent and influential pianists and composers in modern jazz, died on Sunday, his wife, Laura Hess-Hey, and his daughter, Sumayah Jamal, told the Washington Pst. The pianist was 92 and died in Ashley Falls, MA, after a battle with prostate cancer.
Jamal’s spare sense of uncluttered, open rhythm was also, oddly, an influence on such great hip-hop producers as J Dilla , DJ Premier , Pete Rock , all of whom sampled some of the pianist’s finest, funkiest work. Producer, curator and Jazz Detective label owner Zev Feldman released two sets of previously-unheard Jamal performances as the 2022 debut for his new label in “Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse ” and “.” Last week, on this writer’s Pacifica National Public Radio program “Theater in the Round,” Feldman called Jamal “a genius” and an “absolute joy to work with… a living legend.”
“I studied Art Tatum, Bach, Beethoven, Count Basie, John Kirby, and Nat Cole,” Jamal told Wax Poetics. “I was studying Liszt. I had to know European and American classical music. My mother was rich in spirit, and she led me to another rich person: my teacher, Mary Cardwell Dawson, who started the first African-American opera company in the country.”
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