Horace Tapscott

Horace Elva Tapscott, ( born April 6, 1934 in Houston, Texas, † February 27, 1999 in Los Angeles ) was an American jazz pianist and composer.

The son of jazz pianist Mary Lou Malone he learned at age 6 with his mother the piano. Two years later, the trumpet was added. With his family, he moved to Fresno in 1943 and finally to Los Angeles, where he first studied in high school trombone. There he played then - together with Eric Dolphy and Frank Morgan - in the bands of Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and Gerald Wilson. During his military service from 1953 to 1957 he played in an Army orchestra in Wyoming trombone and baritone saxophone. From 1959 to 1961 he was employed as a trombonist with Lionel Hampton, but focused due to the problems resulting from a serious car accident finally on the piano. The end of 1961 he founded the Los Angeles Pan African Peoples Arkestra, an ensemble of 35 musicians, with whom he played avant-garde jazz and was one of the first and Red Callender. The orchestra was under a changed name until the 1990s. In 1963 he took up with Lou Blackburn; also he arranged two albums for the former singer (and later Black Panther activist ) Elaine Brown and directed the recordings.

The saxophonist Sonny Criss took his compositions on the record " Sonny's Dream" (1968). In 1969, Tapscott a quintet with Arthur Blythe on, in 1977 he played for Nimbus panels a, 1979, a trio with Roy Haynes and Art Davis, and later a quartet with John Carter, Cecil McBee and Andrew Cyrille. Tapscott's idiosyncratic music is only since the 1990s, received a national recognition, which was also reflected in tours of the U.S. and Europe and recorded with European musicians such as Nelly Pouget and Michel Godard.