Andrew Hill (June 30, 1931[1] – April 20, 2007) was an American jazz pianist and composer.
Jazz critic John Fordham described Hill as a "uniquely gifted composer, pianist and educator" although "his status remained largely inside knowledge in the jazz world for most of his career."[2]
Hill recorded for Blue Note Records for nearly a decade, producing a dozen albums.
While a teenager, he performed in rhythm and blues bands and with touring jazz musicians, including Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. Hill recalls some of his experience as a youngster, during a 1964 interview with Leonard Feather: "I started out in music as a boy soprano, singing and playing the accordion, and tap dancing. I had a little act and made quite a few of the talent shows around town from 1943 until 1947. I won turkeys at two Thanksgiving parties at the Regal Theatre," parties sponsored by the newspaper Chicago Defender, which Hill coincidentally used to sell on the streets.[4]
Career
In 1950, Hill learned his first blues changes on the piano from the saxophonist Pat Patrick and in 1953, he played his first professional job as a musician, with Paul Williams' band. "At that time", he recalls, "I was playing baritone sax as well as piano."[6] During the next few years, the piano gigs brought him into contact with many musicians, some of whom became relevant influences: Joe Segal and Barry Harris, among others. In 1961, after travelling as an accompanist for Dinah Washington, the young pianist settled in New York City in 1961,[2] where he worked for Johnny Hartman and Al Hibbler, then briefly moved to Los Angeles County, where he worked with Roland Kirk's quartet and at the jazz club Lighthouse Café, in Hermosa Beach.
Hill rarely worked as a sideman after the 1960s, preferring to play his own compositions. This may have limited his public exposure. He later taught in California and held a tenure-track faculty appointment at Portland State University from 1989 to 1996. While at PSU, he established a Summer Jazz Intensive program, in addition to performing, conducting workshops and attending residencies at Wesleyan University, the University of Michigan, the University of Toronto, Harvard University, Bennington College and other schools.[8]
Hill's album Dusk was selected best album of 2001 by both DownBeat and JazzTimes; and in 2003, Hill received the Jazzpar Prize.[2] Hill's earlier work also received renewed attention as a result of the belated release of several unissued sessions recorded in the 1960s for Blue Note, notably the ambitious large-group date Passing Ships. In 2004, he appeared on SOLOS: The Jazz Sessions. As a consequence of his renewed prominence, a new Blue Note album titled Time Lines was released on February 21, 2006.
His final public performance was on March 29, 2007, at Trinity Church in New York City.
Private life
It was while working at the Lighthouse Café, in Hermosa Beach that he met his future wife, Laverne Gillette,[9] at the time an organist at the Red Carpet. They married in 1963 and moved to New York.[4]
Laverne died following a long illness in California, where the couple had settled, in 1989.[10] He married dancer/educator Joanne Robinson Hill in Portland in 1992. They moved to New York City in 1995. From 2000, Hill and his wife lived in Jersey City, New Jersey.[10]
Andrew Hill suffered from lung cancer during the last years of his life. He died at his home in Jersey City, New Jersey.[11][12]
In May 2007, he became the first person to receive a posthumous honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music.
Playing style
Hill's main influences were pianists Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and Art Tatum. "Monk's like Ravel and Debussy to me, in that he put a lot of personality into his playing [...] it's the personality of music which makes it, finally," he said in a 1963 interview with A. B. Spellman. Powell was an even greater influence, but Hill thought that his music was a dead end: "If you stay with Bud too much, you'll always sound like him, even if you're doing something he never did." Hill referred to Tatum as the epitome of "all modern piano playing".[5]
With Carlos Garnett (tenor sax), Woody Shaw (trumpet), Richard Davis (bass), Freddie Waits (drums), Benjamin Franklin Carter, Joan Johnson, LaReine LaMar, Gail Nelson, Antenett Goodman Ray, Ron Steward and Lawrence Marshall (vocals)
One track solo piano; most tracks quintet, with Greg Tardy (clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor sax), Charles Tolliver (trumpet), John Hebert (bass), Eric McPherson (drums)
^In the early 1960s, to promote himself by seeming to be more exotic, Hill told people that he had been born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.[3]
References
^ abMandel, Howard (April 20, 2007) "Andrew Hill: 1931–2007" All About Jazz.Archived September 14, 2007, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved April 20, 2007. During his lifetime, Hill's year of birth was always given as 1937.
^ abcFordham, John (April 23, 2007). "Andrew Hill". The Guardian. Retrieved March 11, 2018.
^Ratliff, Ben (April 21, 2007). "Andrew Hill, 75, Jazz Artist Known for His Daring Style, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved January 2, 2008. Andrew Hill, a pianist and composer of highly original and sometimes opaquely inner-dwelling jazz whose work only recently found a wide audience, died yesterday at his home in Jersey City. He was 75.
^"The State of Jazz: Meet 40 More Jersey Greats", The Star-Ledger, September 28, 2003, backed up by the Internet Archive as of September 27, 2008. Accessed September 15, 2017. "Andrew Hill -- Pianist and composer Hill, who lives in Jersey City, is an artist who can meld the past modes of jazz with its current streams."
