December 21 - David Baker (The Musical Birthday Series, 5th Annual Cycle)

Previous posts for December 21st are here: András Schiff; Michael Tilson Thomas (2019), Michael Tilson Thomas (2020), Frank Zappa; Werner von Trapp (2021), and Michael Tilson Thomas (2022)

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David Baker  (21 December 1931 – 26 March 2016) was an American jazz composer, conductor, and musician, and educator, best known as a professor of jazz studies at the Indiana University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baker’s Dozen: A Tribute in Twelve Lines

David Baker, a performer, composer and educator who helped bring jazz studies into the academy at a time when the ivory tower considered the field infra dig… – New York Times obituary, March 29, 2016

In his own quiet way, David Baker

Lives on as a mover and shaker;

He proved from his base at IU

That jazz was a thing you could do

With suitable music school rigor,

And pursued it with affable vigor

In spite of the wild-eyed polemics

Of skeptical school academics;

And in spite of objections he heard

From jazzers who called it absurd,

And predicted that only anemia

Could result from a jazz academia.

 

 

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