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Keith Tippett: British jazz pianist dies age 72

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    Posted: 15 Jun 2020 at 11:50am
  The ‘west country bloke with a great big heart’ collaborated with a wide range of musicians from Louis Moholo-Moholo to Robert Wyatt 

British Jazz Pianist Keith Tippett Dies at 72
 

The British jazz pianist and composer Keith Tippett has died aged 72. A post on Tippett’s official Facebook page did not disclose the cause of death.

Tippett was known for his unique approach to improvisation and prepared piano. He played in a number of adventurous, rhythmic jazz formations, including Ovary Lodge, Ark and Mujician, and composed for and performed with many leading contemporary classical groups. He collaborated with musicians from the reclusive folk singer Shelagh McDonald to exiled South African musicians such as Louis Moholo-Moholo.

In 2018, Tippett had a heart attack, which led to a debilitating form of pneumonia. It left him unable to work for a period, during which his contemporaries rallied to fundraise for him and his family. He returned to live performance in early 2019.

David Sylvian, formerly of the pop group Japan, paid tribute to Tippett for showing him “great generosity when I took my first tentative steps towards sessions based on improvisation back in the early 90s”, he tweeted. “He forged an undeniably unique path wherever fortune happened to find him.”

Born in Bristol to a musical family, Tippett began his first forays into jazz in that city before moving to London in 1967 and becoming a core catalyst in the capital’s jazz scene. He formed the Keith Tippett Sextet with saxophonist Elton Dean, trumpeter Mark Charig and trombonist Nick Evans. They recorded their debut album, You Are Here, I Am There, for Polydor in 1970.

After the group disbanded, Tippett continued to play with Dean in a variety of formations, often as part of a revered rhythm section featuring South African musicians Harry Miller and Louis Moholo-Moholo.


Keith Tippett performing at the Conservatorio Nino Rota, Monopoli, Italy, 13 December 2013 – video


Speaking to the Wire magazine in 1995, Robert Wyatt, who collaborated with Tippett in his group Symbiosis, credited him with bringing together prog rock, experimental jazz and exiled South African musicians in the early 1970s, describing him as “a west country bloke with a great big heart and completely unlike the old boy network jazz mafia that was the London scene at the time”.

Wyatt said: “He had all barriers down, listened to everybody, open-minded, never put anybody down, and one of his things was to get all these different musicians from different genres together – particularly the South African exiles. He would get together these bands and get us into them and then we’d meet each other. So really you could put a lot of that down to one man.”

In 1970, Tippett formed Centipede, the big band whose 50-strong membership included progressive rock luminaries from King Crimson and Soft Machine. Tippett would form a lasting relationship with King Crimson, performing on their albums In the Wake of Poseidon, Lizard and Islands, and once appearing with the group on Top of the Pops to perform their single Cat Food.

In a review for Let It Rock, critic Chris Salewicz wrote that Tippett’s playing was so essential to Lizard and Poseidon, “it is almost an insult that he should be relegated to the role of featured player”. Tippett, however, had declined an invitation from Robert Fripp to join the band. His style was considered influential on Mike Garson’s playing on David Bowie’s 1973 album Aladdin Sane.

In 1981, he formed the group Mujician with Paul Dunmall, Paul Rogers and Tony Levin, named for his then five-year-old daughter’s assessment of her father’s job. Tippett recalled: “[She] was asked on one of her first days at school, ‘What does your father do?’ and she said ‘mujician’ which was really cute, and it conjures up this image of a magician and a musician.”

Tippett often performed with his wife, the experimental vocalist Julie Tippetts (née Driscoll) . With Brian Auger and the Trinity, she had a hit in 1967 with a cover of Bob Dylan’s This Wheel’s on Fire. The pair fell in love while working together on Driscoll’s solo album, 1969 (released in 1971).

The London experimental music venue Cafe Oto described the couple as “among the most important European jazz musicians (improvisers, composers, arrangers) in the last 40 years”.

In a 2016 interview, Tippett attributed many of his wide-ranging collaborations to the simple fact of friendship and wanting to play with his contemporaries. In 2019, he told the Morning Star that he lived by the ethos: “May music never become just another way of making money.” His most recent album was 2018’s Live in Triest.

from www.theguardian.com

Keith Tippett, a British pianist who contributed to three early King Crimson records, has died at the age of 72.

The cause of death was undisclosed, but The Guardian's obituary reports that Tippett had a heart attack in 2018 that left him with a "debilitating form of pneumonia." He recovered and resumed live performances in 2019.

Born in Bristol, England, on Aug. 25, 1947, Tippett started playing jazz piano as a teenager before moving to London in 1967 to pursue his musical career. He established himself in London's jazz scene, releasing his debut as a bandleader, You Are Here, I Am There, in 1970.

That same year, he performed on three tracks on King Crimson's In the Wake of Poseidon - "Cadence and Cascade," "Cat Food" and the instrumental suite "The Devil's Triangle" - and its follow-up LP, Lizard. He reportedly declined Robert Fripp's invitation to join the band.

Around this time, Tippett formed Centipede - a 50-piece ensemble comprised of progressive rock, jazz and classical musicians - in order to perform his four-part, 85-minute suite "Septober Energy." After they played throughout Europe, the piece was recorded for a 1971 release, with production work by Fripp. Tippett's final King Crimson sessions came later in 1971 with Islands.

While Tippett primarily continued to work in jazz on his own projects and as a sideman, he occasionally crossed paths with the prog world. In 1975, he played on a rock version of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf that also featured Phil Collins, Gary Moore, Bill Bruford of Yes and Brian Eno.

Tippett occasionally enlisted another King Crimson member, Tony Levin, for several of his projects, including a 1984 septet album and a free-form jazz group called Mujician that was named after his five-year-old daughter's description of his job.



 from  www.theguardian.com


Edited by snobb - 15 Jun 2020 at 11:53am
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