In Memory of Professor Stanley Cowell

Stanley Cowell, a pianist, composer and educator who demonstrated a vast range of possibilities for jazz over the last 50 years, died on Thursday at Bayhealth Hospital in Dover, Del. He was 79. Cowell was born in Toledo, Ohio on May 5, 1941, into a family of amateur music enthusiasts. “My father played street-corner violin with some preachers when he was very young,” he told Marian McPartland in a 1999 episode of Piano Jazz. “He was a businessman, and he built the first motel in the city limits of Toledo, Ohio. And all the musicians that would come to town, I would meet, because in those days especially because of segregation or choice, they would stay in the Black community. So I would meet all the musicians who came through.” more on wbgo.org …