David Baker | |
|---|---|
_leading_the_Smithsonian_Jazz_Masterworks_Orchestra.jpg) David Baker (far left) leads theSmithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra during theNEA Jazz Masters awards ceremony and concert in 2008. | |
| Background information | |
| Born | (1931-12-21)December 21, 1931 Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S. |
| Died | March 26, 2016(2016-03-26) (aged 84) |
| Genres | Jazz,classical |
| Occupations | Musician, composer, educator, author |
| Instruments | Trombone, cello |
| Years active | 1950s–2016 |
David Nathaniel Baker Jr. (December 21, 1931 – March 26, 2016) was an Americanjazz composer, conductor, and musician fromIndianapolis, as well as a professor of jazz studies at the Indiana UniversityJacobs School of Music. Baker is best known as an educator and founder of the jazz studies program. From 1991 to 2012, he was conductor and musical and artistic director for theSmithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. He has more than 65 recordings, 70 books, and 400 articles to his credit.
He received theJames Smithson Medal from the Smithsonian Institution, anAmerican Jazz Masters Award, a National Association of Jazz Educators Hall of Fame Award, aSagamore of the Wabash award, and a Governor's Arts Award from the State of Indiana. Baker also held leadership positions in several arts and music associations. TheIndiana Historical Society named Baker an Indiana Living Legend in 2001. TheJohn F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts named him a Living Jazz Legend in 2007.
David Nathaniel Baker Jr. was born inIndianapolis, Indiana, on December 21, 1931, to Patress Lasley Baker and David N. Baker Sr., a postal carrier. His siblings included two sisters, Shirley and Clela, and a brother, Archie.[1][2]
Baker attendedIndianapolis Public Schools and graduated fromCrispus Attucks High School, a segregated public school forAfrican American students.[3] He continued his education atIndiana University inBloomington, Indiana, where he earned abachelor's degree in music education in 1953 and amaster's degree in music education in 1954. Baker also studied withJ. J. Johnson,János Starker, andGeorge Russell[4] and attended theLenox School of Jazz inLenox, Massachusetts, from 1959 to 1960 on a scholarship.[5]
Baker eloped from Missouri, where he began working as a university professor in 1955, to Chicago, Illinois, to marry Eugenia ("Jeanne") Marie Jones.[6] Baker and his first wife, Jeanne, were the parents of a daughter, April. The marriage ended in divorce.[7] Baker had a granddaughter, Kirsten, and a great-grandson, Dylan.[8] Baker's second marriage was toflautist Lida Belt.[7]
Trained as a music educator and trombonist, Baker spent the early part of his career in the 1940s and 1950s as a jazz musician, performing and recording in the United States and in Europe. A facial injury suffered in an automobile accident in 1953 ended his career as a trombonist, but Baker switched to cello and turned his attention to teaching and musical composition. In 1966 he joined the music faculty at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he established the school's jazz studies program. He was later named an IU distinguished professor and chair of the university's Jazz Studies department in theJacobs School of Music. In addition, he became one of the co-musical directors of theSmithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra in 1991. He composed music, mostly on commission, and wrote hundreds of scholarly works related to music. He was active in numerous musical arts organizations.[2][4]
After earning his master's degree from Indiana in 1954, he began teaching atLincoln University inJefferson City, Missouri, in 1955.[1] Lincoln, a historically black institution, had recently begun to admit white students to diversify its student body; however, Baker had to resign from his teaching position after he married Eugenia ("Jeanne") Marie Jones, a white opera singer, due to Missouri's anti-miscegenation laws.[6] One of his students at Lincoln was the composerJohn Elwood Price.[9] Baker returned to Indiana and taught private music lessons in Indianapolis and performed in local bands. He did not resume his academic teaching career until 1966.[2]
Baker began performing as a trombonist in Indianapolis during high school and college. He played in clubs alongIndiana Avenue, the heart of the city's jazz scene of the late 1940s and early 1950s, withJimmy Coe,Slide Hampton, J. J. Johnson, andWes Montgomery. He mentoredFreddie Hubbard andLarry Ridley.[1] He later credited the Hampton family, especially noted jazz trombonist Slide Hampton, for mentoring him in his early years. The Hamptons let him and other local musicians rehearse with their family's jazz band at their Indianapolis home.[10]
During the 1950s Baker played in several big bands, includingLionel Hampton's orchestra. After moving to California in 1956, he played with the West Coast jazz orchestras ofStan Kenton andMaynard Ferguson before returning to Indianapolis to lead his jazz band for two years. He performed in clubs across the United States, including theFive Spot Café in New York City withGeorge Russell in the late 1950s.[10][11] In 1960 he toured Europe as a member ofQuincy Jones's band.[5] He also performed in Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand during his more than sixty-year career.[8]
Baker abandoned the trombone after a car accident in 1953 injured his jaw, but he began learning to play the cello in the early 1960s. Although he played trombone on the George Russell Sextet's albumEzz-thetics (1961), after sustaining the injury, Baker switched to cello forCharles Tyler's album,Eastern Man Alone (1967).[8][12][13] Baker was also able to play trombone with Russell's orchestra onLiving Time (1972), a collaboration withBill Evans, before the jaw injury finally caused him to give up the trombone and focus on teaching and composition.[14]
Baker is credited on sixty-five recordings, including performances on two of Russell's albums,Stratusphunk (1960) andThe Stratus Seekers (1962).[11][13] Beginning in the 1990s he performed with his second wife, Lida Belt Baker, a classically trained flautist.[3]
Although he began as a performer on trombone and cello, Baker is better known for his fifty-year career as a professor of jazz music and for his published works and musical compositions. Because his facial injury in 1953 largely ended the performing aspect of his career, he returned to his home state of Indiana and began a period of increased interest in musical composition and pedagogy.[5][13]
In 1966 he began teaching at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University, where he established a jazz studies program. He was the music school's second African American faculty member and its sole jazz studies instructor for his first ten years at the school.[10][7] The jazz studies curriculum was approved as a degree program in 1968, a time when only about a dozen American universities taught jazz as an academic discipline.[3]
Baker eventually became an IU Distinguished Professor of Music, serving as chair of the Jazz Studies department from 1968 to 2013 and as an adjunct professor in the African American and African Diaspora Studies department.[4] His work as an educator helped make IU a highly regarded school for students of jazz. His students includedMichael Brecker,Randy Brecker,Pharez Whitted,Peter Erskine,Jim Beard,Chris Botti,Shawn Pelton,Jeff Hamilton, andJamey Aebersold.[3]
Baker was among the first to codify the largely aural tradition of jazz. He is credited with writing 70 books, including several on jazz, such asJazz Styles & Analysis – Trombone: A History of the Jazz Trombone Via Recorded Solos (1973),Jazz Improvisation ( 1988), andDavid Baker's Jazz Pedagogy (1989).[7][15] He is also credited with writing 400 articles.[11]
Baker's compositions are often cited as examples ofthird stream jazz, although they included traditional jazz,chamber music,sonatas,film scores, andsymphonic works. He is credited with writing more than 2,000 compositions, including his concerto "Levels" (1973) which received aPulitzer Prize nomination, and the musical score for thePBS documentary filmFor Gold and Glory (2003), which won him anEmmy Award.[1][16]
Baker's best-known composition, which also received significant media attention, was Concertino for Cell Phones and Orchestra, a commission from Chicago Sinfonetta.[7][17][18][19] Baker's other compositions include a tribute toMartin Luther King Jr. in 1968, a violin concerto forJosef Gingold, a flute concerto for James Pellerite, as well as Cello Concerto (1975), which he dedicated to cellistJános Starker, and "Ode to Starker" (1999).[2]
He received over 500 commissions from individuals and ensembles, including compositions that he wrote for Gingold, Starker,Ruggiero Ricci,Harvey Phillips, trumpeter David Coleman, theNew York Philharmonic, theSaint Paul Chamber Orchestra, theBeaux Arts Trio, theFisk Jubilee Singers, and theAudubon Quartet, in addition to theLouisville Symphony, Ohio Chamber Orchestra, and theInternational Horn Society.[2] Other musical groups have recorded his compositions. TheBuselli–Wallarab Jazz Orchestra's albumBasically Baker (2005) includes interpretations of his compositions, many of them written forbig bands and ensembles.[16]
In 1991, in addition to his work at IU, Baker andGunther Schuller became the artistic and musical directors of theSmithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, which was founded in 1990.[7] Five years later Baker became its sole artistic and musical director. He concluded his time with the orchestra in 2012 as maestro emeritus. Among the orchestra's notable performances under Baker's leadership was a concert in Egypt in 2008 when it played at theCairo Opera House, the Alexandra Opera House, and at the Pyramids.[20]
Baker died on March 26, 2016, at the age of eighty-four in Bloomington from complications due toParkinson's disease andLewy body dementia.[8][3]
In the 1960s he introduced jazz studies as academic discipline at Indiana University. It was accepted as an academic degree program in 1968, making it one of the earliest to be established in an American university. In addition to chairing IU's Jazz Studies department from 1968 to 2013, he served as musical and artistic director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra from 1991 to 2012. In these roles he became a leader and mentor to the next generation of jazz musicians.[14][20] His range of interests is reflected in the dozens of books and hundreds of articles he wrote, as well as the hundreds of musical compositions, including many that George Russell called "21st-century soul music."[21]
WithJohn Lewis
WithGeorge Russell
Baker wrote more than sixty books, including:
He is also credited with authoring 400 articles.[11]
Orchestra
Jazz Band
Vocal
Solo/chamber
