John Tchicai vient de nous quitter à l'âge de 76 ans

RIP, John Tchicai

October 8, 2012. 7:56 am • Section: Jazzblog

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Posted by:
Peter Hum

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The Danish website jazzblog.dk reports today that the seminal European free-jazz saxophonist John Tchicai has died at the age of 76. Avant-garde dansh guitarist and bandleader Pierre Dørge wrote here:

John Tchicai, 1936-2012

After struggling for several months after a stroke, John Tchicai on the night of 8/10 2012 kl. 0:45, still asleep in Perpignan.

It is a huge loss for all of us who loved John as a person and music maker. With the desire that we all will continue his charismatic and enigmatic music.

A true champion and inspiration — he is among the largest.

Sincerely,
Pierre Dorge

Elsewhere on the website, it’s reported that Tchicai, suffered a brain hemorrhage at the airport in Barcelona airport and was taken to a hospital in Perpignan, France, where he was recovering.

Tchicai, who was born in Copenhagen and whose father was of Congolese descent, moved to New York in 1963. He played with such musicians as John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry and Cecil Taylor, and appears on Coltrane’s album Ascensionand Ayler’s New York Eye and Ear Control. Tchicai returned to Denmark a few years later, and among his projects was the free jazz orchestra Cadentia Nova Danica, shown in this clip playing in 1967 in Molde, Norway.

Tchicai also performed on John Lennon’s 1969 “noise music” album Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions.

Tchicai’s homeland supported his art. In 1977, the saxophonist he was the first jazz musician to receive a three year-composing stipend from the Denmark’s Ministry of Culture. In 1990, he received a lifetime grant from the ministry. Here is Tchicai, who by the 1980s had switched from alto to tenor saxophone, playing with Dorge’s New Jungle Orchestra:

In the early 1990s, he moved with his wife to California, where he collaborated with such musicians as Henry Kaiser and Wadada Leo Smith. In 2001, he relocated to the south of France.

Here is Tchicai leading a trio of younger Danish musicians last year through his piece Multicoloured Bridge:

Rest in peace, John Tchicai.