From the Examiner:
Jodie Christian, the protean jazz pianist who bridged the hard-bop and avant-garde eras in Chicago, died early Monday morning. He had marked his 80th birthday less than two weeks ago, on February 2.
The pianist had an enormous impact on Chicago music of the last half-century. As a collaborator with Ira Sullivan in the late 1950s, and as a regular “house pianist” with visiting soloists in the decades after, he exemplified the bold and brawny Chicago approach to mainstream jazz. As a sideman for several of saxophonist Eddie Harris’s projects — including Harris’s first foray into electronics — he contributed to recordings that helped pave the way for the jazz-rock fusion. And he unassumedly mentored two generations of younger musicians who have in turn made significant contributions to the Chicago scene.
But Christian truly secured his spot in history in 1965, when he and three other Chicago musicians — Muhal Richard Abrams, Phil Cohran, and Steve McCall — initiated the discussions that became the groundbreaking Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. As documented in George Lewis’s AACM history A Power Stronger Than Itself, Christian’s was one of the five names that appear as signatories on the AACM charter granted by the State of Illinois on August 5, 1965.
• AACM: http://aacmchicago.org
• Jodie Christian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodie_Christian
