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Home > Composers Datebook > Oliver Nelson


	Podcast:		Composers Datebook
	Episode:		Oliver Nelson
	Category:		Health
	Duration:		00:01:59
	Publish Date:		2018-06-04 00:00:00
	Description:		Today’s date marks the birthday of the American composer and jazz saxophonist Oliver Nelson, who was born in St. Louis on June 4, 1932, and died of a heart attack at age 43 in Los Angeles. Oliver Nelson packed a lot of music-making into a tragically short lifetime. He started his professional career playing with jazz bands in St. Louis when he was just 16. Even then, he was arranging and composing original jazz charts. After a stint in the Navy, Nelson studied composition at universities in Missouri and Washington DC, and privately in New York with Elliot Carter. As a sax player, Nelson performed with jazz greats of the 50s and 60s like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Quincy Jones, but increasingly was more in demand as a composer and arranger. In 1961, he released a jazz album entitled “The Blues and the Abstract Truth,” six original compositions played by an all-star septet that included Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans, and Freddie Hubbard. But Nelson also worked with symphony orchestras, writing concert hall and chamber works, including this Saxophone Sonata, played here in an arrangement for clarinet and piano. After moving to Los Angeles in 1967, he wrote scores for television series like "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "Ironside." It was a lucrative but hectic lifestyle, and its relentless pace may have contributed to his fatal heart attack in 1975. Jazz fans have seen to it that Oliver Nelson’s classic jazz LPs from the 1960s have stayed in print, but his concert and chamber works still await a significant revival.
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