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Milford Graves, circa 2000, in front of his house in South Jamaica, Queens, N.Y. New York Daily News Archive/NY Daily News via Getty Images
Drummer, scientist, educator and improviser Milford Graves died in his Queens, N.Y. home around 3 p.m. on Fri., Feb. 12. He was 79. Lois, his wife of sixty-one years, confirmed to NPR that the cause was congestive heart failure, related to a 2018 diagnosis of amyloid cardiomyopathy. Mr. Graves was surrounded by Lois, his five children (four daughters and a son), his beloved granddaughter, Tatiana, and a cross-section of students across generations who had bestowed him with the honorific Professor, a nod to his guidance in music, botany, martial arts and metaphysics.
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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
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