Trombonist, composer, influential educator, conductor and author David Baker died on 26 March at the age of 84 at his home in Bloomington, Indiana.
An NEA Jazz Master, the top US government-backed jazz honour, attending the School of Jazz in Lenox, Massachusetts in 1959-60 proved crucial in his development, his peers there included members of the Ornette Coleman quartet and later he worked with the avant garde George Russell band that experimented with Lydian chromaticism and modality and credited as Dave Baker was on the classic 1961 recording Ezz-thetics as well as Russell’s earlier Stratusphunk and other sextet albums.
He suffered an injury to his jaw which hindered his performing career as a trombonist and he instead began to play cello and composed chamber jazz and third stream music returning to trombone later.
His academic career flourished and he became a professor of music at Indiana University and chairman of the university jazz department in the mid-1960s and is recognised by educators as one of the most significant jazz educators of the period to emerge in America. He was an early inductee in the world’s best known jazz magazine Downbeat’s Jazz Education Hall of Fame, just one indication of his high standing as a pioneering jazz teacher. Former Miles Davis saxophonist Dave Liebman paid tribute to Baker via social media ranking Baker as “one of the original jazz educators along with Jamey Aebersold, Jerry Coker and Dan Haerle. To say that David will be missed is an understatement. He was by far one of the most respected people in the business and contributed so much.”
Baker authored dozens of books on jazz and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for his composition ‘Levels’ for bass, jazz band, woodwinds, and strings; and was awarded an Emmy Award for his music for PBS documentary For Gold and Glory.
As artistic and musical director of the classic jazz repertory Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra he toured widely including a rare gig in the UK at London's Barbican where I heard the orchestra play and had the pleasure of speaking with him briefly backstage. He struck me as very courteous and friendly. Stephen Graham
David Baker, top. Photo: Kendall Reeves/Spectrum Studio/Indiana University