Ed Summerlin

Edgar "Ed" Eugene Summerlin ( born September 1, 1928 in Marianna (Florida ), † 10 October, 2006 Rhinebeck ) was an American jazz musician (tenor saxophone, clarinet, synthesizer), composer and music teacher, who wrote early jazz shows.

Life and work

Summerlin made ​​1951 a first degree at Central Missouri State University and his master's degree the following year at the Eastman School of Music, and then to drive private studies in composition with Gunther Schuller and Hall Overton. After playing in the bands of Sonny Dunham, Ted Weems and Tony Pastor, he taught in the second half of the 1950s at the University of North Texas. There he composed his Requiem for Mary Jo on the death of his nine- year-old daughter, which was premiered at Southern Methodist University in the same year and is considered the first work that introduced in remarkable scope elements of jazz in the church music. In the same year he wrote a jazz Mass to a text by John Wesley. Parts of these works were part of his debut album Liturgical Jazz ( 1959), which received four and a half stars in Downbeat and was presented in March 1960 on TV.

In the early 1960s, Summerlin returned to New York, where he appeared with Eric Dolphy, Pete Laroca, Don Ellis and Sheila Jordan and arranged for Ron Carter, Steve Kuhn, Freddie Hubbard, Dave Liebman, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lee Konitz or composed. Summerlin later wrote numerous other pieces of church music, often to texts of the Methodist theologian Roger Ortmayer. In the late 1960s he conducted together with the journalist and musician Don Heckman the Improvisational Jazz Workshop.

1971 Summerlin founded the jazz program at the City College of New York, which he directed until 1989. In 2006, he died of cancer.

Disco Graphical Notes

  • Liturgical Jazz ( Ecclesia Records) (1959 )
  • Ring Out Joy (Avant -Garde Records) (1968 )
  • Don Heckman / Ed Summerlin The Improvisational Jazz Workshop ( Ictus 1967)
  • Sum of the Parts ( Ictus )
  • Eye on the Future ( Ictus, 2000)

Opus (selection)

  • Requiem for Mary Jo
  • Episcopal Evensong
  • Jazz Vespers Service
  • Liturgy of the Holy Spirit
October 10 Rhinebeck (town), New York Tony Pastor (bandleader) Down Beat Integrated Authority File
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