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Jimmy Heath
![Jimmy Heath is an NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Heath is an NEA Jazz Master](http://www.allaboutjazz.com/images/nea-jazz-masters.png)
During his career, Jimmy Heath has performed on more than 100 record albums including seven with The Heath Brothers and twelve as a leader. Jimmy has also written more than 125 compositions, many of which have become jazz standards and have been recorded by other artists including Art Farmer, Cannonball Adderley, Clark Terry, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, James Moody, Milt Jackson, Ahmad Jamal, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie J.J Johnson and Dexter Gordon. Jimmy has also composed extended works - seven suites and two string quartets - and he premiered his first symphonic work, “Three Ears,” in 1988 at Queens College (CUNY) with Maurice Peress conducting.
After having just concluded eleven years as Professor of Music at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, Heath maintains an extensive performance schedule and continues to conduct workshops and clinics throughout the United States, Europe, and Canada. He has also taught jazz studies at Jazzmobile, Housatonic College, City College of New York, and The New School for Social Research. In October 1997, two of his former students, trumpeters Darren Barrett and Diego Urcola, placed first and second in the Thelonious Monk Competition.
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Jimmy Heath: Love Letter
![Read "Love Letter" reviewed by Thomas Fletcher](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/8903dd0db4f54a6d46a26f7b63c6d020.jpg)
by Thomas Fletcher
Often nicknamed Little Bird," Jimmy Heath began on the alto saxophone acquiring this informal title by dedicating his studies to Charlie Parker and his wee stature. Although not a familiar name to many outside of the devoted jazz community, Heath would go on to pursue a remarkable 76-year career sadly passing away in January, 2020. A fabled musician to many tenor players, Heath presents us with his final testament, a collection of formative ballads. Enhancing the already prolific ...
read moreJimmy Heath: Love Letter
![Read "Love Letter" reviewed by Chris May](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/8903dd0db4f54a6d46a26f7b63c6d020.jpg)
by Chris May
Love Letter is the final album to be made by saxophonist Jimmy Heath, who passed in January 2020 aged 93. It was completeted just a month earlier. The title is well chosen: the album is a love letter to jazz, a love letter to ballads, and a love letter to Heath's surviving family members, friends and audience. Soulful and luminous, it is everything one could hope for in the last will and testament of a jazz master. ...
read moreJimmy Heath: Charlie Parker with Strings
![Read "Jimmy Heath: Charlie Parker with Strings" reviewed by William Ellis](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/2010/jimmy_heath_thumbnail_william_ellis_one_lp_ip.jpg)
by William Ellis
Jimmy Heath: Langston Hughes Library, Flushing, New York, 30th April 2013 It was impossible to make a choice! This is Charlie Parker with Strings (Mercury Records, 1950)--a compilation of all the Charlie Parker with Strings--not just the one studio performance; there's some live performances. Someone at The Charlie Parker organisation that used to give the benefits for Charlie Parker--the Foundation that his wife started--made this compilation and they gave them out to some of the sponsors ...
read moreThe Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra: Jimmy Heath: The Endless Search
![Read "Jimmy Heath: The Endless Search" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/2010/srjo_jimmyheath_mt.jpg)
by Dan McClenaghan
Tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath is highly respected by his peers and by serious listeners, but he isn't well known outside the jazz world in the way that Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane are. He played with those legends and many more. He formed The Heath Brothers in 1975 with his siblings, drummer Albert Tootie Heath and bassist Percy Heath, and has penned numerous tunes that have become classics, including CTA" and Gingerbread Boy." Like Gillespie before him, he reaches ...
read moreI Walked With Giants
![Read "I Walked With Giants" reviewed by Russ Musto](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/ce7a0402daddf095fb0d186909de0e09.jpg)
by Russ Musto
I Walked with GiantsJimmy Heath/Joseph McLarenSoftcover; 344 pagesISBN: 1439901988Temple University Press2010 The title alone of Jimmy Heath's marvelous memoir speaks volumes about the man. The NEA Jazz Master is himself an acknowledged giant among his peers and his choice to name the book as he did is an indication of both his great humility and self-effacing humor (in this case regarding his height). Heath is a clever ...
read moreHeath Brothers: Endurance
![Read "Endurance" reviewed by Joel Roberts](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/2009/heathbros_jk.jpg)
by Joel Roberts
Endurance is a fitting word to describe Jimmy and Albert Tootie" Heath, the veteran mainstreamers whose new release is their first since the death of their brother Percy four years ago. Jimmy Heath, who just celebrated his 83rd birthday, remains a titan on the tenor saxophone (and occasionally the soprano), playing with the relaxed confidence and hard-earned wisdom of a certified jazz master. (The NEA honored him as such in 2003, one year after Percy.) His tone is ...
read moreMay 2008
![Read "May 2008" reviewed by AAJ Staff](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/ce7a0402daddf095fb0d186909de0e09.jpg)
by AAJ Staff
Lock 10 at Joe's Pub
Kathy Hendrickson's play Lock 10 is the story of a white guitarist in the 1930s seeking to leave the family business to go on tour with an integrated band. Staged as a period radio play, with actors playing actors voicing roles, it makes for an odd telling. The actors aren't tethered to microphones as they would be in an actual radio production, but they don't quite inhabit their meta-roles either. Strange as well was the ...
read moreJazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath
![Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/ce7a0402daddf095fb0d186909de0e09.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Jimmy Heath's birthday today!
Jimmy Heath has long been recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist and a magnificent composer and arranger. Jimmy is the middle brother of the legendary Heath Brothers (Percy Heath/bass and Tootie Heath/drums), and is the father of James 'Mtume', Roslyn and Jeffery. He has performed with nearly all the jazz greats of the last 50 years, from Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis. In 1948 at the age ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath
![Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/ce7a0402daddf095fb0d186909de0e09.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Jimmy Heath's birthday today!
Jimmy Heath has long been recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist and a magnificent composer and arranger. Jimmy is the middle brother of the legendary Heath Brothers (Percy Heath/bass and Tootie Heath/drums), and is the father of James 'Mtume', Roslyn and Jeffery. He has performed with nearly all the jazz greats of the last 50 years, from Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis. In 1948 at the age ...
read more
Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath
![Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/ce7a0402daddf095fb0d186909de0e09.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Jimmy Heath's birthday today!
Jimmy Heath has long been recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist and a magnificent composer and arranger. Jimmy is the middle brother of the legendary Heath Brothers (Percy Heath/bass and Tootie Heath/drums), and is the father of James 'Mtume', Roslyn and Jeffery. He has performed with nearly all the jazz greats of the last 50 years, from Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis. In 1948 at the age ...
read more
Jimmy Heath And Claudio Roditi Are Gone
![Jimmy Heath And Claudio Roditi Are Gone](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/logo/dougramsey100.jpeg)
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Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
The last thing any of us at Rifftides wants is for our endeavor to become an obituary service. Life goes on, however, as does its opposite. So we continue to note the passing of musicians who have enriched listeners around the world. Recently, we lost American saxophonist, bandleader and composer Jimmy Heath and Brazil’s Claudio Roditi, perhaps the most influential trumpet and flugelhorn soloist to emerge from his country in the second half of the last century. Heath was 93, ...
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Jimmy Heath in 10 Tracks
![Jimmy Heath in 10 Tracks](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/ce7a0402daddf095fb0d186909de0e09.jpg)
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
The late Jimmy Heath had a crisp and deliberate sound on his tenor saxophone. His solos and double-and triple timing were fluid, seemingly effortless and never short on ideas. His soprano saxophone was insistent and his flute was divine. His compositions were melodic and sophisticated, and his arrangements were engaging, always taking the listener's short attention span into consideration. Though his name isn't generally thought of in the same breath as Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley and Stan Getz, ...
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Jimmy Heath (1926-2020)
![Jimmy Heath (1926-2020)](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/ce7a0402daddf095fb0d186909de0e09.jpg)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Jimmy Heath, a tenor saxophonist with exceptional gifts as a composer, arranger and player who spent critical years of the 1950s in prison for the sale of drugs but rebuilt his career in the 1960s and beyond, died on January 19. He was 93. Nicknamed Little Bird" for his Parker-like fluidity when he played alto saxophone in the late 1940s, Jimmy didn't start recording leadership albums until 1959, when producer Orrin Keepnews signed him to Riverside Records. In 1975, he ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath
![Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/ce7a0402daddf095fb0d186909de0e09.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Jimmy Heath's birthday today!
Jimmy Heath has long been recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist and a magnificent composer and arranger. Jimmy is the middle brother of the legendary Heath Brothers (Percy Heath/bass and Tootie Heath/drums), and is the father of Mtume. He has performed with nearly all the jazz greats of the last 50 years, from Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis. In 1948 at the age of 21... Read more. ...
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Jimmy Heath: Holland, 2012
![Jimmy Heath: Holland, 2012](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/ce7a0402daddf095fb0d186909de0e09.jpg)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
A mysterious CD arrived a couple of weeks ago from a reader. The album's title is The Voice of the Saxophone, featuring the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw of the Netherlands, conducted by Henk Meutgeert and featuring solos by tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath. That's all the information that came with the CD, and the sender said that's about all he knows about it. So I had to roll up my sleeves and look around, since the album isn't listed even ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath
![Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/ce7a0402daddf095fb0d186909de0e09.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Jimmy Heath's birthday today!
Jimmy Heath has long been recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist and a magnificent composer and arranger. Jimmy is the middle brother of the legendary Heath Brothers (Percy Heath/bass and Tootie Heath/drums), and is the father of Mtume. He has performed with nearly all the jazz greats of the last 50 years, from Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis. In 1948 at the age of 21... Read more. ...
read more
Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath
![Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Heath](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/ce7a0402daddf095fb0d186909de0e09.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Jimmy Heath's birthday today!
Jimmy Heath has long been recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist and a magnificent composer and arranger. Jimmy is the middle brother of the legendary Heath Brothers (Percy Heath/bass and Tootie Heath/drums), and is the father of Mtume. He has performed with nearly all the jazz greats of the last 50 years, from Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis. In 1948 at the age of 21... Read more. ...
read more
“Trane was always high on Jimmy’s playing and so was I. Plus, he was a very hip dude to be with, funny and clean and very intelligent. Jimmy is one of the thoroughbreds.” — Miles Davis
“My pick from the world’s talent would be Diz as leader, John Lewis or Hank Jones on piano, Ray Brown bass, Milt Jackson vibes, Jimmy Heath tenor, and Sonny Stitt alto.” — Kenny Clarke
“I had met Jimmy Heath, who - besides being a wonderful saxophonist - understood a lot about musical construction