George Russell, a composer, educator and theorist who had a powerful effect on the jazz forms and methods that have evolved from the 1950s to the present, has died. He was 86.
A MacArthur Foundation Award winner, a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master and a Distinguished Artist-in-Residence Emeritus at the New England Conservatory, where he taught for 35 years, Russell died Monday in Boston of complications from Alzheimer's disease.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday, July 30, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 29 words Type of Material: Correction
George Russell obituary: The obituary of jazz composer George Russell in Wednesday's Section A said that among his survivors was a son, Millgardh. His son's name is Jock Millgardh.
Russell was a rare spokesman for the study of theoretical principles in an art form that emphasizes improvisation and spontaneity. His treatise "The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization" -- first published in 1953 -- had a significant effect on the growing fascination with modal and free improvisation surfacing in the late 1950s. Elements of the concept, which outlines methods by which improvisers can free themselves from the "tyranny of chords," as Russell described it, were a factor in the modal works present in Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue," the bestselling album in jazz history.
Russell's premise that jazz improvisation could reach beyond well-established harmonic foundations further validated the methods chosen by jazz artists such as John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, Don Ellis, Wayne Shorter and others. His own compositions -- beginning with the startlingly inventive music on his mid-1950s breakthrough recording, "The Jazz Workshop," continuing with his small groups of the '60s, occasional large ensembles of the '80s, and the Living Time Orchestra that he led on and off until his death -- were constantly evolving displays of the expansive possibilities of his creative overview.
"My work," he told The Times after the MacArthur grant was awarded in 1989, "tries to achieve a kind of world view or synthesis of many kinds of musics, one that doesn't ignore the sounds of our time. My hope is that it's a complete music -- physical, emotional as well as thought-provoking."
George Allen Russell was born June 23, 1923, in Cincinnati, the adopted son of Joseph, a chef on the B&O Railroad, and Bessie, a nurse. Drawn to music at an early age, he sang a number with Fats Waller at age 7 and played drums in a Boy Scout drum and bugle corps. After receiving a scholarship to Wilberforce University, he was called up for the World War II draft. But when tuberculosis was diagnosed in his examination, he was hospitalized, serendipitously with a fellow patient who instructed him in the fundamentals of music theory.
