Al Neil

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Alan Douglas "Al" Neil (born March 26, 1924 in Vancouver ; † November 16, 2017 ) was a Canadian jazz musician ( piano , also vocals , zither , sound effects, composition ), who was also active as a visual artist and author. The Wire music magazine called him "an outstanding figure in the history of Canadian jazz and improvised music".

Live and act

Neil studied with Glenn Nelson and Jean Coulthard , but was a self-taught jazz pianist . Influenced by bebop recordings by Bud Powell and other musicians, he began to appear in Vancouver nightclubs in the late 1940s, and from the 1950s also worked with his own formations.His first recordings were made in 1959 with Dale Hillary (alto saxophone), Lionel Chambers (Double bass) and Bill Boyle (drums) when he accompanied the lyricist Kenneth Patchen ( Kenneth Patchen Reads with Jazz in Canada with the Alan Neil Quartet , Folkways Records ). Al Neil was one of the central figures in the jazz club Cory Weeds' Cellar Jazz Club in the 1950s and early 60s , where he also played with American musicians such as Carl Fontana , Art Pepper and Sonny Red . In 1963 a television recording was made of a performance by Neil at the Cellar Club with saxophonist Glenn MacDonald and bassist Don Thompson for the NFB ( In Search of Innocence ) station.

Influenced by free jazz , in the mid-1960s Neil had a trio with bassist Richard Anstey and drummer Gregg Simpson , with whom Neil experimented with recorded sound effects using record players , voices, toy instruments and zither in titles such as "Psychedelic" . Their recordings from the years 1965–1968 - mostly live recordings from the Vancouver School of Art - appeared in 1986 as LP Retrospective: 1965–1968 and were re-released in an expanded form as a double CD. In 1967 an appearance by the Al Neil Trio was shown on the Canadian television station CBC in the TV series Enterprise .

In 1980 Neil presented the solo album Boot & Fog (Music Gallery Editions), on which he played the standards " Ruby, My Dear " and " Over the Rainbow " in addition to his own compositions . In the field of jazz, Tom Lord lists him in eleven recording sessions between 1959 and 1979, most recently with the poet Carolyn Zonailo ( Journey to the Sibyl ). In 1970 he broke up his trio in order to focus more on writing and artistic activity. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked occasionally with the percussionists Simpson and Howard Broomfield and with the bassists David Lee, Lisle Ellis and Clyde Reed . Recordings from this phase were released as a music cassette ( Selections: 3 Decades , Nightwood Editions, 1991).

Neil was also active as a visual artist and author; his works mostly had a semi-autobiographical character and referred to his experiences as a musician; including poems, a novel ( Changes , Toronto 1975) and a collection of short stories ( Slammer , Vancouver 1980). In the fine arts he organized multimedia performances in the 1970s and turned to mixed media collages in the following decade. His work has been exhibited (often in connection with concerts and readings) in the Sound Gallery and Motion Studio (1966), the Vancouver Art Gallery (1968, 1972 and 1989), the Art Gallery of Ontario (1969), Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1973), and shown in the Coburg Gallery Vancouver (1984–1987).

Discographic notes

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karin Larsen: Vancouver musician and artist Al Neil passes away at age 93. CBC , November 18, 2017, accessed on November 19, 2017 (English).
  2. ^ The Wire, editions 221-226, C. Parker, 2002
  3. ↑ Tom Lord: The Jazz Discography (online, accessed September 6, 2017)
personal data
SURNAME Neil, Al
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Neil, Alan Douglas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian jazz musician, visual artist and author
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Vancouver
DATE OF DEATH 16th November 2017