Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams worked primarily as a composer, arranger, and pianist, acquiring most of his skills without formal instruction and drawing strong inspiration from the late Bud Powell’s bebop developments. In 1965 he helped establish Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and served as its initial president, quickly becoming a central figure in the city’s jazz circles. Although born in 1930 and thus roughly ten years senior to his nearest AACM colleague, Abrams guided musicians across three successive generations; he also led ensembles and taught at the Banff Center, Columbia University, Syracuse University, and the BMI Composers’ Workshop, yet his achievements as a performer and recording artist frequently received less notice. His earliest engagements took place on Chicago’s blues, R&B, and hard-bop scene, where he appeared as a sideman alongside Dexter Gordon, Max Roach, Ruth Brown, and Woody Shaw. Abrams’s own releases, however, demonstrated his inventive abilities. The 1967 album Levels and Degrees of Light, issued on the local Delmark label, charted a path both for his subsequent work and for that of fellow AACM members such as Henry Threadgill, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Leo Smith, and Anthony Braxton. At the same time he maintained ties to earlier styles; despite the forward-looking character of his music, his performances encompassed everything from boogie-woogie through bebop to free improvisation, as heard on the Black Saint recordings Sightsong and Rejoicing with the Light. As a composer he also engaged the classical sphere. His first symphony, Novi, scored for orchestra and jazz quartet, has been presented at multiple festivals, while the Kronos Quartet has played his String Quartet, No. 2. Muhal Richard Abrams passed away at his Manhattan residence in October 2017 at the age of 87.