Trumpeter, composer and scholar Jacques Coursil died on 26
June 2020 in Plombières, Belgium. He was 82. One of the few Europeans to
have travelled to New York to take part in its avant garde movement of
the 1960s, his trumpet added an original voice to a decisive moment in
jazz history.
Coursil was born in the Montmartre area of Paris on 31 March, 1938
and grew up in the city’s suburbs. His parents were from Fort-de-France,
Martinique, in the French West Indies. Creole songs, biguine,
clarinettist Alexandre Stellio’s music and the Gregorian chants of
churches made up the family’s musical environment. Coursil’s mother
sung, and literature held an important place in the household. His
father, a former sailor, was a syndicalist and French Communist Party
member.
After a tentative start on the violin at age nine, Coursil took up
the cornet as a teenager. Early jazz interests included New Orleans
players Sidney Bechet and Albert Nicholas. A live performance by
saxophonist Don Byas left a strong mark. Contemporary classical music –
Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern – and Pierre Schaeffer’s
experimentations were other strong early interests.
In 1958, during decolonisation, Coursil left for Africa. He travelled
for three years to Mauritania and Senegal, joining the entourage of
Léopold Sédar Senghor, negritude writer and first president of
independent Senegal. Back in France, Coursil studied literature and
mathematics. He worked as a schoolteacher in Dieulefit, southern France,
while attending the nearby Montélimar conservatory.
Selling his extensive library, Coursil moved to New York in 1965,
without contacts but with knowledge of the jazz avant garde. He found
work bartending at East Village jazz club The Dom.
“Coming to the free jazz scene, I firmly intended to deconstruct the
whole apparatus of rhythm,” Coursil told writer Jason Weiss in Always In Trouble: An Oral History Of ESP-Disk’, The Most Outrageous Record Label In America.
“I wanted to ‘destroy’ the beat and harmony too… I wanted to play
atonal without any rhythmic framework. I also wanted to stop playing
scales, to get away from melody. I was clear on that.”
Coursil joined drummer Sunny Murray’s band, leading to his first
recording session for Murray’s self-titled ESP-Disk’ in January 1966.
“Everybody plays legato now. I hate it. This is why I play in a very
articulate manner,” wrote Coursil in Actuel magazine in 1968.
“A melodic line, a sonic sentence, needs to be organised rhythmically.
It needs spirit, swing, but that swing doesn’t have to be framed in a
regular metre. An atonal and arhythmic phrase has to contain a certain
amount of swing for it not to seem escaped directly from John Cage’s
zoo.”
Leaving Murray’s band, Coursil joined tenor saxophonist Frank
Wright’s first quintet, with drummer Muhammad Ali and bassist Henry
Grimes. Alto saxophonist Arthur Jones was also a member and his
partnership with Coursil would last for several years. The unit recorded
Your Prayer for ESP in May 1967.
Coursil studied with pianist Jaki Byard and composer Noel DaCosta.
Now focussing more on composition, he recorded his own leader date for
ESP, with saxophonist Marion Brown. It remains unreleased. He wrote the
40 minute serialist Black Suite and an extended mass for choir
and orchestra. “It might not please the Pope, this old racist who banned
jazz, the music of black people, from churches, as if the gifts of
Balthazar were in some way degrading,” he wrote of the work in Actuel.
In addition to music, Coursil led what he termed a double life,
teaching French by day at the prestigious United Nations International
School and writing for Actuel. New York associates of the 1960s
also included Rashied Ali, Alan Silva, Bill Dixon, Perry Robinson,
Clarence ‘C’ Sharpe, Mark Whitecage, Burton Greene and Paul Bley.
Coursil rehearsed briefly with The Sun Ra Arkestra.
During the summer of 1969, he visited France with Arthur Jones,
taking part in sessions for the BYG label, then taping the first records
in its Actuel series. Coursil made two LPs under his name – Way Ahead and a realisation of his Black Suite – and played on Burton Greene’s Aquariana.
The sessions’ core personnel included Jones, bassist Beb Guérin and
drummer Claude Delcloo. Coursil’s band shared the stage of the American
Center and the Lucernaire Theatre with pianist François Tusques and the
recently arrived Art Ensemble Of Chicago and Anthony Braxton, who plays
on Black Suite.
New York activity dwindled down, ceding ground for Coursil’s academic
pursuits. Shortly before leaving the city permanently in 1975, the
trumpeter added a new technique to his repertory. “I was walking on Park
Avenue [and] met my good friend Jimmy Owens… I said to him, Would you
tell me how to do circular breathing? And as he was walking towards his
home, he picked up straws from the cafeteria and he showed me the trick.
And then I… started stopping all the cliches that I heard and learned…
Then dropping all the cliches I have invented myself… And from then
until now, it’s just been one note,” Coursil told All About Jazz New York in 2005.
Retreating from public performance, Coursil obtained two doctorates
from the Université de Caen in Northwestern France, where he taught for
two decades. A 1977 linguistics dissertation was entitled Recherches linguistiques sur la parole (Linguistic Researches On Speech). A 1992 applied science dissertation was entitled Grammaire analytique du français contemporain: Essai d’intelligence artificielle et de linguistique générale (Analytical Grammar Of Contemporary French: Essay In Artificial Intelligence And General Linguistics).
Coursil taught literature and theoretical linguistics. After Caen, he
worked at the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane in Martinique,
Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, and at the University of California,
Irvine. In addition to numerous papers, he published in 2000 La fonction muette du langage: Essai de linguistique générale contemporaine (The Silent Function Of Language: Essay In General Contemporary Linguistics), and in 2015 Valeurs pures: Le paradigme sémiotique de Ferdinand de Saussure (Pure Values: The Semiotic Paradigm Of Ferdinand De Saussure).
After more than three decades without records – but not entirely
without performances, notably with François Tusques in 1981 – Coursil
issued Minimal Brass in 2005. Initiated for his Tzadik label by
saxophonist John Zorn, a former student of Coursil, the project was a
solo album of fanfares made up of multiple overdubbed parts using
circular breathing.
Clameurs and Trail Of Tears followed in 2007 and
2010 (both Universal Music France). Recorded in Martinique, the former
featured pieces for trumpet and spoken word – drawing on the work of
writers such as Frantz Fanon and Édouard Glissant – against a percussion
and synthesizer pads background. The latter was an extended work
dealing with the deadly forced relocation of Native Americans by the US
government in the 1830s. The album included a reunion with his former
colleagues from the free jazz scene. Coursil’s final album was FreeJazzArt: Sessions For Bill Dixon, a duet with Alan Silva issued by RogueArt in 2014.“This is my last free jazz record,” he said, “I won't make others.”
Jacques Coursil is survived by his wife Irène Mittelberg and his children Florent and Marie.