Archie Shepp, the fearless saxophonist, composer, playwright and poet, was born on May 24, 1937. As he turns 85, we honor his recorded legacy with a special edition of Take Five.
Milford Graves (1941–2021)
Groundbreaking free-jazz percussionist and polymath Milford Graves died today of congestive heart failure at the age of seventy-nine, as reported by NPR’s Lars Gotrich. Described by composer and saxophonist John Zorn as “basically a twentieth-century shaman,” Graves possessed an astounding intellect that was matched only by his curiosity: Apart from contributing heavily to the emergence of free jazz, he was an accomplished martial artist, herbalist, inventor, and visual artist who for decades recorded his own heartbeats in order to study and manipulate them to various ends, including his own art and a patented medical procedure. Only two weeks ago did “Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal,” a major exhibition of his work at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, draw to a close after a five-month run.
Milford Graves, the pioneering jazz drummer, professor, inventor, herbalist, visual and martial artist, has died, as NPR Music’s Lars Gotrich reports. He was 79. In 2018, Graves was diagnosed with amyloid cardiomyopathy colloquially known as stiff heart syndrome and got told he had six months to live.
Born in Queens in 1941, Graves was a pioneer of free jazz, making dozens of recordings over the span of his life (including
The Giuseppi Logan Quartet, Albert Ayler’s
Love Cry, and Sonny Sharrock’s
Black Woman) along with various television and film projects. He was a Professor Emeritus of Music at Bennington College, where he taught from 1973-2012. Known for drawing music influences from around the world, he mastered African polyrhythms and studied the Indian tabla and Latin-jazz timbalas. He helped found the the New York Art Quartet in the 1960s with saxophonist John Tchicai, trombonist Roswell Rudd, and bassist Lewis Worrell, and is credited with helping to liberate jazz