Andrew Hill, one of the most visionary and intellectual jazz pianists of the post-bop generation, lost a long battle with lung cancer on Friday morning. He was 75 years old, just two months shy of his 76th birthday.
Hill, best known for his 1964 recording Point of Departure (Blue Note), was an incredibly prolific and, in recent years, highly acclaimed composer and performer. Though for decades undervalued and obscure, Hill's angular but richly melodic compositions and improvisations always had a sizable following among knowledgeable critics and listeners. Apparently by osmosis, however, his incredible harmonic and rhythmic innovations have been assimilated into the jazz mainstream, finally gaining Hill the respect of his peers and followers in the last decade or so of his life.
Though often reported to have been born in Haiti in 1937 (a rumor that he himself liked to spread), Hill was actually born in Chicago on June 30, 1931. Growing up in the place where jazz developed into an art form (Chicago was where New Orleans musicians migrated after World War I, and where Louis Armstrong became jazz's first auteur), Hill absorbed the brilliant evolution of the American idiom from his childhood. At 13, encouraged by jazz alpha-pianist Earl Hines, Hill began playing piano; soon he was sitting in with the all of the great jazz masters of the 1940s (from Charlie Parker to Miles Davis when they passed through Chicago. Perhaps his most significant association in jazz, however, was with composer/arranger Bill Russo (a staple of the Stan Kenton orchestra), who introduced young Hill to the immigrant German composer Paul Hindemith. Hill would study with Hindemith from 1950-52.
First recording in 1954 as a sideman for bassist David Shipp, Hill's first session as a leader came one year later when he recorded the album So in Love for the Warwick Records label (accompanied by great Chicago bassist Malachi Favors). The first record was fairly conventional, and forgettable, hard bop, and Hill quickly forsook that sound, forming a pop-friendly big band known as the De'bonairs and playing as a reliable Chicago sideman before moving to New York in 1961 to play in the bands of Dinah Washington and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
Always an avid disciple of bebop piano titan Bud Powell, Hill, like most jazz musicians of his generation, was shaken and reinvented by the radical music of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Taylor, especially, moved young Andrew Hill, who began a synthesis of Powell and Thelonious Monk's bop, Horace Silver's hard bop, and Taylor's dense avant-garde explorations, meshing those disparate sounds into something quite new and original, even iconoclastic: Hill, perhaps more than any other musician of his day, understood that one need not completely embrace the radicalism of the "New Thing" in order to develop the bop-rooted jazz traditions in those same directions. His was an advanced version of hard bop, one that was unafraid to incorporate the thick, dissonant chords and oblong modal work of Taylor and his contemporaries.
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Article comments
1 - Pico
Wow, sad news. He finally started getting his due in recent years, but perhaps still not enough. His legacy will continue to grow in the coming years, though, I feel pretty certain of that.
Hill's works has sometimes been so dense I had a hard time absorbing it, but I could tell that it was something much more sophisticated than what could easily be understood. Recently I finally had the occasion to listen to Compulsion after being familiar with (and reviewing) Nels Cline's version of the title song and found it to be very advanced and out of the box, like much of his Blue Noters. It's not surprising that a guy like Cline admires Hill's music.
Very nice tribute, Michael.
2 - Fred Stark
I am very sad this great musician/composer has
passed away. I first listened to his music in the late '70s with the reissues from 1970. I have been
a teacher so I can appreciate the value of mentoring
the students. I am a person with a physical disability as Andrew Hill was, and I know the challenges he faced dealing with those issues. I am
grateful I was able to see him in June 2006 once again.
3 - ken
A great appreciation of Hill and far more factual and insightful than the ones circulating on the AP Wire. Hill was a great pianist and composer.
4 - Leslie Bohn
Oh, yes, Mr. West, this was well-written and shows a real in-depth knowledge of the music. Your essay gets across the idea that AH's approach to the music was thoughtful and experimental and intellectual " serious.
That amazing flurry of five or six Blue Note albums from late 63 and 64 is just brimming with ideas, as you eloquently say. All are, as they say, "highly recommended." Your favorite seems to be Point of Departure, which only edges out IMHO Black Fire by a nose. Almost anything with Dolphy in that period is a treasure, too.
His recent comeback was welcome; I saw him a couple years ago at Lincoln Center and he was very very sharp, picking out fast ripping runs that cut through the big room.
What are your musical thoughts about the big comeback allbum Dusk, Mr. West and his late playing?
5 - Michael J. West
Thanks for your comments, Ken and Leslie!
Leslie, I actually prefer Black Fire myself; I've had "Subterfuge" in my head every day since I wrote the article. I focus on Point of Departure in the article because it's his best-known. Also, it features the most "all-star" lineup of his career.
Dusk is a hard album to argue with, too. It felt like both a summation of his classic '60s Blue Note work in a lot of places, but in others as though it was thrusting forward into the future (especially "15/8"). And the unaccompanied piano stuff? Beautiful. It was the best he'd done in years...
...until Time Lines came out last year. That was a marvel - the songs were so beautiful, but the arrangements and the orchestrations were so--I guess "pointillistic" is the word.
That actually might be a good way to look at his late work, Leslie, since you ask - though he'd gained such mastery over that melodic/harmonic rainbow on piano and in composition that he turned his attention to innovating the arrangements.
6 - Maxim
I've discovered music by Andrew Hill quite recently but almost instantly fell in love with it. Since then i've absorbed his every work I could find. "Black fire" was the first acquaintance but then there have been "Passing ships", "Andrew!!!", "Judgment", "Dance with death" and "Dusk". Some songs like "Passing ships" or "Pumpkin" from Black Fire make my eyes watery )) I know and can easily explain what makes Andrew absolutely unique even among the great. It is his superb melodic talant + distinctive piano style + ever fresh approach to arrangement. His music perfectly balances melody and improvisation without becoming cheezy or too abstract.
I greatly regret his passing. Which is particularly sad news now as i was looking for Mr. Hill's contact info hoping to invite him to give a performance in my country.