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John Tchicai

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

John Tchicai (1936 to 2012) was a Danish free jazz saxophonist and composer. He was born in Copenhagen, the son of a Danish mother and a Congolese father, and grew up in Aarhus. He learned the violin and from his mid-teens played clarinet and alto saxophone, with a preference for the latter. In the late 1950s he travelled through northern Europe. In 1962 he met trumpeter Bill Dixon and saxophonist Archie Shepp at a festival in Helsinki. On their advice he moved to New York a year later.

Music and breakthrough

There he took part in the October Revolution in Jazz and in the New York Contemporary Five and the New York Art Quartet. He can be heard on influential recordings such as Four for Trane by Shepp, New York Eye and Ear Control by Albert Ayler and Ascension by John Coltrane. In 1966 he returned to Denmark and focused on music education. He founded the orchestra Cadentia Nova Danica, in 1968 co-founded the Instant Composers Pool in Amsterdam and in 1969 played on Life with the Lions by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Influence

In the early 1980s he chose the tenor saxophone as his main instrument. In 1990 he received a lifelong grant from the Danish Ministry of Culture. He later lived in California and in the south of France and played in Yo Miles, a group that explored Miles Davis's electric period. Tchicai shows how free jazz from America also found a path of its own in Europe, with Denmark and the Netherlands as its home base.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Cadentia Nova Danica from 1970 and notice how many musicians play at once without the whole falling apart.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

Categories: Artists