Bowie, Lester

▪ 2000

      American jazz musician (b. Oct. 11, 1941, Frederick, Md.—d. Nov. 9, 1999, Brooklyn, N.Y.), played trumpet flamboyantly, with broad, sweeping gestures, and created extraordinary timbres, from full, rich tones to human-sounding growls, whimpers, and mock-laughter, in his melodies. His innovative sounds and free-wheeling sense of rhythm yielded musical lines that encompassed a range of expression rare for jazz; comedy and tragedy as well as abstraction came within his scope. At an early age Bowie, from a talented musical family, studied trumpet in St. Louis, Mo., and practiced with his horn aimed out the window, in the hope that Louis Armstrong would pass by and hear him; bebop trumpeters were his other early inspirations. After serving in the army, attending some college-level music classes, and accompanying touring rhythm-and-blues stars, among them his first wife, Fontella Bass, he lived in Chicago (1965–69) and began his three-decade tenure with the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The latter, an adventurous and colourful freely improvising quintet, became a favourite of the European and Japanese jazz circuits, and Bowie's popularity led to his forming a series of groups from small combos to his 59-piece Sho' Nuff Orchestra of 1979. His best-known group was Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy, an octet that played original works as well as jazz arrangements of rock and pop hits; he also worked often as a sideman, and his versatility extended to performing solo trumpet concerts and composing both songs and large-scale works. Noted for his humour, he performed in a white laboratory coat, chef's hat, or suede jacket, swaying and stepping while he played, yet his underlying seriousness and lyricism were the more significant elements that made him the most influential jazz trumpeter of his generation.

* * *