[Dixielandjazz] "Sir" Roland Hanna Obit

[Rob McCallum]

This certainly is sad news, and certainly unexpected.  I had the good
fortune to see Roland Hannah live at Baker's Keyboard Lounge several years
ago with Curtis Fuller on trombone, Charles McPherson on alto and Roy Brooks
on drums.  I can't remember who the bassist was, but it was another
Detroiter (perhaps Ralphe Armstrong or Don Mayberry).  It was a hard driving
reunion for those guys.  He'll be missed.  I believe Barry Harris is now the
last surviving member of that pianist exodus of the 1950's, as Tommy
Flanagan passed not long ago.

All the best,

Rob McCallum


----- Original Message -----
From: Stephen Barbone <barbonestreet@earthlink.net>
To: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz@ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 1:27 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] "Sir" Roland Hanna Obit


> Roland Hanna, certainly one of the most versatile pianists in jazz
> passed away on November 13. For him, there were no musical boundaries
> and he will be sorely missed by many around the world. Following is his
> obit.
>
> Steve Barbone
>
> November 15, 2002 - New York Times
>
> Roland Hanna, Jazz Pianist and Composer, Dies at 70
>
> By PETER KEEPNEWS
>
>        Roland Hanna, a versatile jazz pianist whose deft touch, lush
> harmonies and encyclopedic knowledge enabled him to fit comfortably in a
> wide range of musical contexts, died on Wednesday in Hackensack, N.J. He
> was 70 and lived in Liberty, N.Y. The cause was a viral infection of the
> heart, his family said.
>
> Mr. Hanna was, as John S. Wilson of The New York Times said in 1985, "an
> impeccably polished performer" who was "as much at home in
> turn-of-the-century ragtime as he is in the works of John Coltrane." Nor
> were his influences limited to jazz: his harmonically complex
> improvisations were also informed by his extensive classical training.
> "Classical music has always been a driving force for me," he told Zan
> Stewart of The Los Angeles Times in 1988, "but jazz is my natural
> music."
>
> Ultimately, Mr. Hanna said, his goal was the obliteration of musical
> boundaries. "For the average person, music is separated into categories,
> but not for me," he said in the same interview. "To me, music is food,
> and I don't have to say `These are apples and these are pears.' I can
> say `This is music and it tastes good.' "
>
> Mr. Hanna's open-minded approach led to work with bandleaders ranging in
> approach from the traditional swing of Benny Goodman to the freewheeling
> modernism of Charles Mingus.
>
> His grasp of jazz history led to work in the late 1980's and early 90's
> with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Smithsonian Jazz
> Masterworks Orchestra, the leading exponents of the jazz repertory
> movement, and to a tour as a solo pianist with the Smithsonian
> Institution's
> traveling Duke Ellington exhibition in 1999.
>
> In his later years he focused on composing chamber and orchestral works,
> including some pieces he performed with a chamber trio in which he
> played cello. In 1993 he was the guest piano soloist when the Detroit
> Symphony performed his composition "Oasis."
>
> That concert was, among other things, a triumphant homecoming. Roland
> Pembroke Hanna was born in Detroit on Feb. 10, 1932, and was considered
> one of the leading exponents - along with Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones and
> Barry Harris - of the so-called Detroit school of jazz
> piano, a style that combined the dexterity and harmonic sophistication
> of bebop with the understated elegance of an earlier era.
>
> Mr. Hanna left Detroit in 1955, when he moved to New York to enroll at
> the Juilliard School. (He had briefly studied at the Eastman School of
> Music two years earlier, but left because he felt his interest in jazz
> was being stifled.)
>
> He had begun studying piano at age 11 and was introduced to jazz in high
> school by Flanagan.
> "He sort of made it seem like I could do it too, so I jumped in," Mr.
> Hanna said. Mr. Hanna once named Mr. Flanagan, who died last year, as
> one of his three greatest pianistic influences, along with Art Tatum and
> Artur Rubinstein.
>
> It took Mr. Hanna some time to graduate from Juilliard because he kept
> taking sabbaticals to work - with Goodman, Mingus, Coleman Hawkins and
> others - but he finally received his degree in 1960.
>
> From 1963 through 1966 he frequently led a trio at the Five Spot in New
> York, and he worked steadily in the 1960's and 70's with the Thad
> Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, which he joined in 1966, and with the
> New York Jazz Quartet, featuring the saxophonist and flutist Frank Wess,
>
> which Mr. Hanna formed in 1974.
>
> His main income, however, came from teaching. He taught at Eastman, the
> Manhattan School of Music, the New School and Queens College. He also
> continued playing in jazz clubs and at festivals, and was especially
> popular in Japan, where he became ill about three weeks ago.
>
> Mr. Hanna is survived by his wife of 48 years, the former Ramona
> Woodard; two sons, Michael and Christopher; two daughters, Cheryl and
> Cheri; six grandchildren; two sisters, Winifred Wells and Ethel Brown;
> and three brothers, Leonard, Elisha and Lagorce.
>
> For the last three decades Mr. Hanna insisted on being billed as Sir
> Roland Hanna. As he explained, the "Sir" was not an affectation or a
> casually bestowed title like Duke or Count. He was knighted by the
> government of Liberia in 1970, in recognition of benefit concerts he had
> given there.
>
>
>
>
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