The Passing of Bill Barber (1920 - 2007)

[tubapress]

Sadly, we have lost yet another great artist, Bill Barber. I saw this posted in the NY Times Obituaries today. Sorry to report such sad news. Bill was a groundbreaker to say the least. His work with Miles Davis is truly inspiring and blazed the path for today's thriving jazz tuba genre. I was fortunate enough to play a concert or two with him in the now defunct Goldman Band. He was a genuinely warm person who was always armed with a great story or two! He will be sorely missed!



June 29, 2007
Bill Barber, Who Brought the Tuba to Famed Jazz Sessions, Is Dead at 87
By PETER KEEPNEWS
Bill Barber, one of the first musicians to play modern jazz on the tuba, died on June 18 in Bronxville, N.Y. He was 87.

The cause was heart failure, said his daughter, Jill Barber Segarra.

Mr. Barber performed or recorded with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz and other leading modernists in the course of a jazz career that began in 1947, when he joined the pianist Claude Thornhill’s influential and adventurous big band.

John William Barber was born on May 21, 1920, in Hornell, N.Y., near Rochester. He began playing tuba in high school and later studied at the Juilliard School and performed with an Army band.

After his discharge from the Army in 1945, he settled in Kansas City, Mo., where he played with the Kansas City Philharmonic. A few years later he moved to New York, where he joined the Thornhill band and, in 1949 and 1950, participated in a series of historic recordings led by Miles Davis.

Those sessions, featuring a nine-piece band that played intricate, understated arrangements by, among others, Gil Evans, who had also written for Thornhill, came to be seen as a precursor to the cool jazz movement of the 1950s. They were later reissued on LP as “Birth of the Cool.â€

[LoyalTubist]

viewtopic.php?t=22083

The New York Times was late.