John Tchicai, Saxophone Player in Free Jazz Movement, Dies at 76

Morten Langkilde/Polfoto, via Associated Pres

John Tchicai, a soft-toned Danish saxophonist who was at the center of the free-jazz movement in the mid-1960s, notably with the New York Art Quartet and on John Coltrane’s watershed album “Ascension,” died on Monday in Perpignan, France. He was 76.

The cause was complications of a stroke he suffered in June, said the filmmaker Alan Roth, a friend.

Mr. Tchicai’s participation in “Ascension,” the 1965 large-ensemble recording that marked Coltrane’s great push into a looser and louder kind of music, away from traditional harmony and rhythm and the rigor of his own quartet, solidified his place in the jazz avant-garde. But even amid the cathartic assault of “Ascension,” Mr. Tchicai’s sound set him apart from other free-jazz saxophone players.

He borrowed some of the heart-rending wail of Albert Ayler, possibly the most passionate and noisiest of the new players. But whether in ballad whispers or jagged bursts on any of the saxophones and wind instruments he played, Mr. Tchicai produced a delicate sound.

John Martin Tchicai (pronounced chih-KYE) was born in Copenhagen on April 28, 1936, the son of a Congolese father and a Danish mother. He started learning violin at the age of 10. Partly inspired by his half-brother, who played drums in the Harlem Kiddies, a trio of black Danish musicians, and partly by seeing Duke Ellington and other American musicians perform in Copenhagen, Mr. Tchicai turned to jazz and picked up the alto saxophone around the age of 15.

After serving in the Danish Navy he moved to Copenhagen, where he soaked up its vibrant jazz scene. Playing with a local band at a festival in Helsinki in 1962, he met the saxophonist Archie Shepp and the trumpeter Bill Dixon, then growing forces in the New York avant-garde. That fall he moved to New York, where he joined the New York Contemporary Five. The group, which included Mr. Shepp and the trumpeter Don Cherry, made two albums in 1963.

The next year, with the trombonist Roswell Rudd, Mr. Tchicai helped found the New York Art Quartet, whose other members were the bassist Lewis Worrell (later replaced by Reggie Workman) and the drummer Milford Graves. The group recorded only two albums, but they are among the outstanding documents of the free jazz of that period.

In 1964 Mr. Tchicai played on “New York Eye and Ear Control,” a collaborative album including Ayler and Cherry, and on Mr. Shepp’s “Four for Trane,” dedicated to Coltrane. The following year he was a member of the 11-man lineup that recorded Coltrane’s “Ascension.”

Mr. Tchicai returned to Denmark in 1966. He helped found the large ensemble Cadentia Nova Danica and started collaborating with European free improvisers. In 1969 he took part in a concert in Cambridge, England, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono were on the bill; they joined the jazz musicians at the end for a jam session, which was recorded and appears on the Lennon-Ono album “Unfinished Music #2: Life With the Lions.”

After withdrawing from music to study yoga and meditation for several years, Mr. Tchicai resumed his career, playing with the guitarist Pierre Dorge’s New Jungle Orchestra, taking part in the pianist Cecil Taylor’s 1984 big-band album “Winged Serpent” and writing orchestral works, including “Hymne til Sofia” (2001), a composition for choirs, vocal soloists, marimba and rhythm section. His later recordings included “John Tchicai With Strings” in 2005 and “In Monk’s Mood,” consisting mostly of Thelonious Monk’s music, in 2009.

In 1990 he was awarded a lifetime grant by the Danish Ministry of Culture. The next year he took a teaching position at the University of California, Davis, where he stayed for a decade. In 1999, the New York Art Quartet reconvened for performances and a new album.

Mr. Tchicai had lived in Claira, in southern France, near the Spanish border, since 2002. He was married and divorced four times, most recently to the pianist Margriet Naber Tchicai. He is survived by a daughter, Julie Tchicai Iverson; a son, Yolo; and a brother, Mauritz.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/arts/music/john-tchicai-saxophone-player-in-free-jazz-movement-dies-at-76.html?ref=jazz