IN MEMORIAM
Remembering Three Musicians' Legacies and Their Ties to Harvard
Three music masters who had fruitful associations with Harvard through the Harvard Jazz Bands and Office for the Arts passed away over the summer. Each made significant contributions to the jazz idiom and to the music education of Harvard undergraduates.
Composer/soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy was honored at Harvard in 1993-94 with an artist residency and concert presented by the OFA and Harvard Jazz bands. “Interpreting the Masters: A Tribute to Steve Lacy” explored this great innovator’s early musical influences – Duke Ellington, Herbie Nichols, and Thelonious Monk – as well as his own compositions. Performing at the concert, presented in Sanders Theater on April 16, 1994, were Lacy, Harvard’s Monday Jazz band, and special guest artists Irene Aebi (vocals), don Byron (clarinet), Roswell Rudd (trombone), and Ed Schuller (bass). The concert featured two new works commissioned by the OFA: “Guide to the Symphony,” a symphonic song by Lacy set to a poem by Weldon Kees, and Jeff Friedman’s large ensemble arrangement of Lacy’s “Prospectus,” set to a poem by Blaise Cendrars.
Following his return to the U.S. in 2002 after many years in Europe, Steve Lacy served on the faculty at the New England Conservatory. He died in Boston on June4, 2004. The Conservatory will honor him with a Memorial Concert on October 23. A commemorative concert will be performed at Harvard in December with artist Jane Ira Bloom.
Considered the premier swing saxophonist of his time, Jean-Baptiste Illinois Jacquet was presented at Harvard more times than any other artist affiliated with the Office for the Arts. His first visit in 1981-82 was at the invitation of Director of Bands Tom Everett for Everett’s Afro-American Studies course “The Jazz Tradition.” In the spring of 1982, Jacquet returned for “Jammin’ at Harvard and Radcliffe,” a series of workshops, jam sessions, and concerts sponsored by the Office for the Arts and the Harvard Foundation and produced by Joyce Kouffman ’76. The series continued with a semester-long residency in 1983 and culminated in November 1984.
Jacquet’s Harvard experience is widely acknowledged as central to his career turnaround. The devotion of the Jazz Band student and his realization of the educational significance of the big-band format prompted Jacquet to make a major career change. “The Harvard students helped me decide to form my own band,” he said in a 1988 Boston Globe interview. That band went on to tour the U.S. and Europe, and was featured at Lincoln Center, among other festivals and venues worldwide.
Jacquet returned to Harvard in 1987, along with trumpeter Lester Bowei and six Harvard-educated jazz artists, for the Jazz Band’s 15th anniversary concert. His performance of “Flyin’ Home,” his signature tune from his days with the Lionel Hampton band, broughy the sell-out Sanders Theatre crowd to a riotous standing ovation. Jacquet visited again in 1989 to emcee the “Jazz for Live” concert in Sanders. His final appearance at Harvard was for another Jazz Bands anniversary, this time with alumni Fred Ho ’79 and Don Braden ’85. Braden, by then a noted professional saxophonist, was one of the students Jacquet had mentored during his early visit in the 1980s.
Jacquet died in New York City on July 22, 2004, two months after receiving an honorary doctorate from Julliard.
“One of the leading pianists of his generation” (Boston Globe, July 22, 2004), James Williams was also a composer and educator. He was born in Memphis, but through his teaching at Berklee College of Music he became a significant presence in Boston in the 1970s and 1980s before moving to New York City.
He first appeared as a guest artist at Harvard in 1984 with Illinois Jacquet. Williams returned to Harvard in 1988 and again in 1989 for “The Rhythm Section Project,” a program conceptualized by Tom Everett and sponsored by the Office for the Arts. In this program, exceptionally talented student jazz improvisers received the opportunity to interact and learn from professional jazz rhythm sections. He was joined by Gray Sargeant (guitar), Whit Browne (bass), and the late Alan Dawson (drums).
Williams continued his relationship with the Office for the Arts over the ensuing years. He died on July 19, 2004, in Manhattan at the age of 53.
