Ex-Centrum Jazz Port Townsend Artistic Director Bud Shank Dies at 82

PORT TOWNSEND -- Bud Shank, former artistic director of Centrum's Jazz Port Townsend program and a renowned alto jazz saxophonist whose career spanned 60 years, has died at his home in Tucson, Ariz.
He was 82.

Cause of death was listed as pulmonary failure.
While Shank had “some ongoing health issues," according to JazzTimes.com, the Web site said a few days before his death last Thursday he had been in San Diego, recording a new album.
Funeral arrangements were pending.
Born May 27, 1926, in Dayton, Ohio, Clifford Everett “Bud" Shank tried his hand at a variety of woodwinds before settling on the saxophone.
He attended college in North Carolina and worked with saxophonist Charlie Barnet before moving to California in the late 1940s, where he played with trumpeter Shorty Rogers and then pianist Stan Kenton.

He was one of the early stars of Kenton's Innovations in Modern Music band and was closely associated with the emergence of swinging “West Coast" jazz in the 1950s.
Working with guitarist Laurindo Almeida, Shank was also one of the first jazz musicians to explore Brazilian music.
In the late 1970s, a revitalized jazz scene saw Shank emerge with a new quartet, LA 4, which included guitarist Laurindo Almeida and bassist Ray Brown.
Always exploring new musical frontiers, Shank also played with India's star sitar-player Ravi Shankar, Japanese kotoist Kimio Eto and London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Shank cut a number of albums for the international music label World Pacific from the 1950s to the '70s.

In 2005 he formed the Bud Shank Big Band in Los Angeles.
He was scheduled to headline at the Tucson Jazz Society's spring series of concerts later this month.
He was honored in 2008 by the Tucson group and the Los Angeles Jazz Society with their lifetime achievement awards.
“Shank's cool but always strongly swinging sound has made him one of a handful of saxophone players with an instantly recognizable and always exciting sound," the Tucson Jazz Society said in its award citation.

“Bud Shank has more than earned his status as a legend."
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