Bearded and bespectacled, Bill Dixon was a distinctive figure in the world of free jazz and African-American arts. A jazz trumpeter, composer and teacher, he was also the organiser of musicians’ collectives, an innovative figure in the world of dance and a visual artist of distinction. His trumpet-playing style was extremely original, combining African-influenced vibratos and distorted tones with an underlying lyricism. Although he led bands for much of his life, he was best known for his collaborations with the avant-garde saxophonists Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler, and for his searing, anguished playing on Cecil Taylor’s album Conquistador.
Dixon was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and, although his family moved to Harlem in the early 1930s, he was to return to New England for most of his adult life, settling in North Bennington, Vermont, in 1968, where he taught at Bennington College until 1995, latterly as Professor of Music.
Although he had played the trumpet in high school, Dixon did not take up the instrument seriously until he was 21 and had completed his military service. By that stage he had trained as a graphic artist, and had begun to exhibit his work. He specialised in lithography, and continued to show his prints, together with paintings and drawings, throughout his life. His musical studies began in earnest in 1946 at the Hartnett Conservatory, and he was working mainly as a trumpeter and arranger by the end of the 1940s.
In 1951 he began performing with the pianist Cecil Taylor, and they continued to work together, off and on, for the next couple of decades. However, in 1961 he started playing regularly in a quartet with Shepp, and they made a number of recordings together, including an influential album for Savoy. The saxophonist John Tchicai also became a regular collaborator.
In 1964 Dixon organised a series of concerts at the Cellar Café in Manhattan called “October Revolution in Jazz”. This was the launchpad for a number of young players, including Roswell Rudd, Milford Graves and the members of Shepp and Dixon’s group, who were to become known as “the new thing” in jazz. The next year Dixon founded the Jazz Composers’ Guild, a short-lived co-operative intended to short-circuit booking agents by giving musicians direct responsibility for their own careers.
Advertisement
Busy as a freelancer in the mid-1960s, Dixon became fascinated by improvising alongside dancers and he started working with the choreographer and dancer Judith Dunn. She was instrumental in bringing him to Bennington, and they went on to stage regular free jazz and dance events for the next 20 years until her death in 1983.
Dixon had a strong interest in music education and launched the “Free Conservatory of the University of the Streets” to help inner-city youth in New York. He also established a department of black music at Bennington, where he mentored the careers of up-and-coming free jazz players including the saxophonist Marco Eneidi and the drummer Jason Krall.
In the 1990s he was a regular musical associate of the British drummer Tony Oxley. They recorded a number of albums together, but Dixon also took care to document his solo playing, either unaccompanied, or with minimal backing. His 2001 Solo Works set of six CDs is the highlight of this achievement, with a final disc of commentary and interviews added to more than seven hours of trumpet solos. After his retirement from Bennington in 1995, he toured and played frequently until the onset of illness in 2008.
He is survived by his long-term partner, Sharon Vogel, and by a son and daughter.
Bill Dixon, jazz trumpeter, educator and artist, was born on October 5, 1925. He died on June 16, 2010, aged 84