Jimmy Lyons

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Jimmy Lyons 1978

Jimmy Lyons (born December 1, 1933 in Jersey City , New Jersey , † May 19, 1986 in New York City , New York) was an American jazz musician (saxophone, flute).

Live and act

Lyons moved to New York City in 1941, where he lived with his grandfather. At 15 he began playing the alto saxophone; he received an instrument from Buster Bailey and was a student of Rudy Rutherford . In the neighborhood he could see Bud Powell , Elmo Hope and Thelonious Monk at private performances. After a long period in the US Army as an infantryman in Korea and in army bands, he attended New York University and began performing, but worked for the post office for a long time during the day. His breakthrough as a professional musician came from his collaboration with Cecil Taylor from 1961, on whose albums Live at Café Montmartre (1962 with Sunny Murray ) and Unit Structures (1966, inter alia with Andrew Cyrille ) he participated. In 1969 he worked with Eddie Gale and released his first own album, which was followed by more from the late 1970s.

In addition, from 1970 to 1971 he taught music at Narcotic Addiction Control , a drug program in the City of New York, was artist in residence with Taylor and Cyrille at Antioch College until 1973 , where he met his wife, bassoonist Karen Borca , and directed Black in 1975 Music Ensemble at Bennington College . He became part of the loft jazz movement ( Wildflowers , 1976), led his own groups, among others. a. with drummer Paul Murphy , but continued to play with Taylor. In the field of jazz, he was involved in 59 recording sessions between 1961 and 1985, according to Tom Lord . In 1986 he died of lung cancer.

Lyons should not be confused with radio DJ James L. Lyons (1916–1994), who founded the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1958 with Ralph J. Gleason .

Discography

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. The date of birth cannot yet be determined with certainty: According to Richard Cook Jazz Encyclopedia London 2007 he was born in 1931; Ian Carr et al. a. Jazz Rough Guide (Stuttgart 1999), Martin Kunzler Jazz-Lexikon (Reinbek 2002) and Wolf Kampmann Reclams Jazzlexikon (Stuttgart 2002) write in 1932; however, jazzinthevalley.org, allaboutjazz and Wolfram Knauer (Jazzinstitut) give 1933 as their date of birth.
  2. Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed November 30, 2019)