If you wanted to talk about how work songs filtered their way to places like Memphis and Chicago and turned into blues, or how Bix Beiderbecke and Johnny Dodds were pioneers in jazz soloing, or how giants like Lionel Hampton used the Suzuki method to learn multiple instruments, Nathan Davis could school you—and over the years as a player, mentor and teacher, he did that for thousands of students at the University of Pittsburgh, having founded its Jazz Studies program.
Davis died Sunday, April 8, at his home in Palm Beach, Fla. of natural causes. He was 81.
Upon his retirement in 2013, the university released a list of some of his accomplishments since he founded the Jazz program in 1969.
Among them:
•Establishing the 42-year-old annual Pitt Jazz Seminar and Concert, during which international jazz stars have come to campus, conducted free lecture/demonstrations, performed at community venues, and given a gala Saturday-night concert at Carnegie Music Hall;
•Creating the University of Pittsburgh Sonny Rollins International Jazz Archives, which houses original manuscripts, commercial recordings, photographs, musical instruments donated by jazz pioneers and their families, and video and audio recordings documenting the annual Pitt Jazz Seminar and Concerts;
•Founding in 1977 the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame, which displays in Pitt’s William Pitt Union artifacts donated by jazz legends and which honors new inductees every year (one living and one deceased) who have made exceptional contributions to jazz;
•Founding the Pitt Jazz Ensemble, which comprises dedicated Pitt student jazz musicians and vocalists who present an annual concert on campus every spring and have performed internationally in Brazil, Jamaica, Switzerland, and Trinidad;
•Building the state-of-the-art William R. Robinson Recording Studio, located in Pitt’s Bellefield Hall, which provides students with hands-on education in recording techniques;
•Launching the peer-reviewed International Jazz Archives Journal, which offers research on jazz scholarship, publishes manuscripts of the music of internationally acclaimed jazz musicians, and is distributed around the world to 20 countries;
•Composing Jazzopera: Just Above My Head—a unique operatic fusion of jazz, gospel, Western classical music, and modern dance—which premiered in Pittsburgh in 2004 and had musical elements the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said “were woven wonderfully into the story line, providing tension, tenderness, and jubilation,” and;
•Serving as faculty director for the Jazz Ahead program at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as a jazz master faculty member at the annual Ravinia Festival in Chicago, as musical director for the Thelonious Monk Institute’s Steans Music Institute Summer Jazz Program in Aspen, Colo., and as an artist at the new Jazz Masters München Program held in March 2013 in Munich, Germany.
Davis was born Feb. 15, 1937 in Kansas City, Kansas. Over his illustrious career, Davis worked with greats such as Ray Charles, Art Blakey, Eric Dolphy, Kenny Clarke, and Slide Hampton.
“Those closest to him knew that my father put his family before anything else, including in particular my sister and me (he of course loved our mother and adored his three grandchildren as well),” Davis’ son, Pierre, told the New Pittsburgh Courier in an exclusive interview, April 10. “That’s hard to comprehend given what he achieved in his career —a virtuosic musician and innovative composer and someone at the avant garde of music education in the United States—but it’s true. In fact, everyone I’ve spoken to since his passing wanted me to know how proud he was of me and told them often. I am fortunate and blessed to know this because my father told me often, as well. I don’t know if I told him often enough how unbelievably proud I was to have him as a father. He touched thousands and thousands of lives through his playing, teaching and mentorship, but none more profoundly than mine.”
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