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Bill Dixon
A mentor to countless musicians, through both his teaching and his role as a producer for Savoy Records, Dixon turned his focus to education in the late 1960’s, serving for nearly 30 years on the faculty at the prestigious Bennington College, where he founded the historic Black Music Division in 1973.
With the notable exception of Cecil Taylor’s Conquistador (Blue Note), Dixon has recorded almost exclusively as a leader since 1962, most frequently for the Soul Note label in the 1980’s and 90’s. Still a prolific composer at age 82, his work as a composer and improvisor can also be heard on the critically acclaimed February 2008 CD, Bill Dixon with the Exploding Star Orchestra (Thrill Jockey), and in July 2008 he recorded a new collection of original music with an all-star nonet for the Firehouse 12 label.
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Bill Dixon: With Archie Shepp, 7-Tette & Orchestra Revisited
by Chris May
If Bill Dixon is today, in 2023, less widely remembered than other New Thing warriors such as Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, it is partly because he had little desire for celebrity, devoting much of his energy to organizing on behalf of his fellow musicians and composers, and teaching. In 1964, midway through making the 1962-1967 recordings collected on this album, Dixon organized the historic October Revolution in Jazz at the Cellar Café in Manhattan, which ...
read moreCecil Taylor: With (Exit) To Student Studies Revisited
by Mark Corroto
Documenting the evolution of Cecil Taylor is an undertaking that is way beyond the pay grade of most listeners. Just as in the study of homo sapiens (yes, us) where there is no critical moment (the missing link) that we can definitely pinpoint where our ancestors established language, art and importantly, abstract thought, Taylor's music can be thought of in similar terms. Obviously his approach didn't emerge fully formed. Or did it? No, that is an irrational thought, but a ...
read moreBill Dixon e Cecil Taylor: iniziò a Verona
by Angelo Leonardi
La pubblicazione di quest'inedita incisione in studio documenta un momento storico: il magistrale e fugace confronto artistico tra Bill Dixon e Cecil Taylor dell'estate 1992. I due protagonisti del free dettero il 25 giugno di quell'anno un concerto a Verona Jazz, nei giorni seguenti s'esibirono a Vienne (Francia) e subito dopo entrarono in studio a Villeurbanne per documentare i brani ora pubblicati. L'allora direttore di “Musica Jazz," Pino Candini, definì il concerto veronese “un incontro avvenuto sotto il ...
read moreBill Dixon: An In-depth Look into the Accomplishments, Philosophies, and Convictions of the Man
by Frank Rubolino
This interview was originally published at One Final Note in October 2002. When one reflects on the innovators who were fundamental in propelling the second wave of the new music movement in the 1960s, Bill Dixon's name always appears near the top of the list. His accomplishments as a musician and educator are vast, a small sampling of which includes his work as architect of the Jazz Composers' Guild in 1964; the formation of the Black Music Division ...
read moreBill Dixon: Excerpts from Vade Mecum
by AAJ Staff
Introduction by AAJ Contributor Clifford Allen.
It is rare in the climate of this music to be presented with a view of an artist that is truly multifaceted, even though the collected works of most artists operate at a number of levels and, on occasion, in a number of media. Bill Dixon is probably best known as a trumpeter and composer; he is also a visual artist, professor (Bennington College, 1968-1996), and has created an expansive body of written material, ...
read moreBill Dixon: Tapestries for Small Orchestra
by John Sharpe
Back in 2007 Firehouse 12 Records announced itself in an audacious declaration of intent with release of Anthony Braxton's 9 CD+DVD box set Nine Compositions 2006. Now in a move of similar ambition the label has gone someway to redressing the imbalance in composer/trumpeter Bill Dixon's recorded output, with this handsome two CD + DVD set which is undoubtedly one of the events of the year. It follows hot on the heels of two other important orchestral works in a ...
read moreBill Dixon: Tapestries for Small Orchestra
by Nic Jones
Bill Dixon Tapestries For Small Orchestra Firehouse 12 2007
When this double-CD/single-DVD set hits the market in November 2009, trumpeter Bill Dixon will be 84 years old. In an ideal world--and on the basis of this release that's the world Dixon inhabits--age wouldn't be an issue. His work is that of a questing spirit not in thrall to the ageing process. Dixon's life and music were celebrated at the Vision Festival in 2007, but ...
read moreBill Dixon - Bill Dixon with the Exploding Star Orchestra (2008)
Source:
Something Else!
had this discussion about jazz with a friend of mine once. He really couldn't deal the sound of a full-bore, large-scale ensemble (he doesn't like any jazz, honestly, but that's sort of irrelevant here). I can't remember exactly what CD was playing in my car, but it seemed to make him nervous. “How can you stand this?!," he said. It seemed like the wrong question to me. In my synesthetic kind of way, the sounds of music seem to emanate ...
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Farewell Bill Dixon...Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra, 2008
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Gapplegate Music Review by Grego Edwards
The great Bill Dixon is gone. I am late at putting my hand at a fitting memorial line or two. This is all I think I need to say: Bill Dixon never sounded like anybody else on trumpet and he never wrote a line that didn't have his indelible stylistic footprint squarely emblazoned upon it. So we turn to one of his last recordings, Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra (Thrill Jockey 192). As I nabbed this as a download ...
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Bill Dixon - Intents and Purposes (RCA 1969, International Phonographic, 2011)
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Music and More by Tim Niland
Trumpeter, composer and educator Bill Dixon's music has always been something of an enigma to me, but seeing how revered he was by his fellow musicians I tried my best to enjoy it. This album, amazingly released originally by a major label and out of print for many years has been given a beautiful re-issue and re-mastering, which brings the album considered to be Dixon's masterpiece to life. I found this music surprisingly accessible, but no less original in its ...
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Recent Listening: A Bill Dixon Rarity
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Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Bill Dixon, Intents and Purposes (International Phonograph). Dixon, who died last year at 84, is typically described as a force in the free jazz that emerged in the1960s. He was that, but Intents and Purposes defied labeling when Dixon recorded it more than four decades ago. This long overdue reissue confirms that the album withstands categorization. Its daring and forthright iconoclasm has substance that outlives much music that was conceived in protest or defiance in the roiling atmosphere of that ...
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Local Space and a Firm Cloud: Bill Dixon, Oct. 5, 2010
Source:
Ni Kantu by Clifford Allen
Right now I'm listening to Berlin Abbozzi, a disc recorded in 1999 for FMP by Bill Dixon, who would have turned 85 today (or yesterday, depending on what time zone you're in). Here he plays trumpet and flugelhorn along with utilizing electronic delay, and he's joined by then-regular collaborator, English percussionist Tony Oxley, and the German bassists Klaus Koch and Matthias Bauer. In the pantheon of Dixon recordings, it's not one I listen to often, and I'm not exactly sure ...
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Happy Birthday Bill Dixon, Wherever You Are.
Source:
Brilliant Corners, a Boston Jazz Blog
Image courtesy of Stephen Haynes. “If you are you, 24 hours a day, then you do not have to remember who you are supposed to be in different situations—something that I imagine could be troublesome.“ —Bill Dixon. The Grand Old Man didn't make it to today and in the period that has followed his passing in June, there have been all manner of musical chairs shuffled in a back story spectacle of mixed appeal. On one hand I've seen a ...
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A Tapestry for (from) Bill Dixon
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Ni Kantu by Clifford Allen
When I mentioned to friends that I would be attending the memorial service for Bill Dixon at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery the last weekend in July, as with any situation where one mentions “death" and “funerals," the response was unequivocally apologetic. Those same people were probably surprised when I said it was something I was looking forward to attending / experiencing and that, after all was said and done, how powerful and enjoyable it was. As speaker Ben ...
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The Legacy of Bill Dixon (1925-2010) Part One
Source:
Ni Kantu by Clifford Allen
"Bill Dixon left us a lot of homework, and the job now is to sit down and do the work--because if you don't, when you see him again, Bill will kick your ass."--Stephen HaynesIn the month since trumpeter and improvising composer Bill Dixon passed away, some things have become abundantly clear. I've often found that when I was listening to his music, I felt the presence of Bill in the room, car, or wherever I was at the ...
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Bill Dixon Memorial Event to be Held July 31st at New York's St. Mark's Church in the Bowery
Source:
Improvised Communications
On Saturday, July 31st from 5:30-7:30 p.m., musician/composer/educator/artist Bill Dixon will be remembered with a memorial event at St. Mark's Church In The Bowery on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Dixon, an innovator in the world of creative improvised music and inspiration to subsequent generations of trumpet players, died on June 16th at his home in North Bennington, Vermont after a two-year illness. He was 84 years old.
The public event will include a performance of Dixon's last composition by his ...
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Bill Dixon, Leading Edge of Avant-Garde Jazz
Source:
Michael Ricci
Bill Dixon, the maverick trumpeter, composer, educator and major force in the jazz avant-garde movement of the 1960s, died on Wednesday at his home in North Bennington, Vt. He was 84.
In the early 1960s, when rock was swallowing popular culture and jazz clubs were taking few chances on the new thing as the developing avant-garde was then known Mr. Dixon, who was known for the deep and almost liquid texture of his sound, fought to raise the profile of ...
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—Bill Meyer, DownBeat
...Dixon has fashioned a work around which new formal paradigms will need to be constructed.
Dixon’s music explodes category: it is neither free nor through-composed, though elements of both
approaches are often discernible. I hope this fine addition to his discography, coupled with a renewed
interest in his work, will allow more of Dixon’s orchestral compositions to be performed by equally
sympathetic interpreters.
—Marc Medwin, Signal to Noise
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Bill Dixon
Instrument: Trumpet
Born: October 5, 1925
Died: June 16, 2010
