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Bill Dixon
Bill Dixon
Background information
Birth name	William Robert Dixon
Born	October 5, 1925; Nantucket, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	June 16, 2010 (aged 84); North Bennington, Vermont, U.S.
Genres	Free jazz
Occupation(s)	Composer, visual artist, educator, musician
Instrument(s)	Trumpet, flugelhorn, piano
Years active	1960–2010
Formerly of	Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor

William Robert Dixon (October 5, 1925^[1] – June 16, 2010)^[2] was an American composer and educator. Dixon was one of the seminal figures in free jazz and late twentieth-century contemporary music. His was also a prominent activist for artist's rights and African American music tradition.^[3] He played the trumpet, flugelhorn, and piano, often using electronic delay and reverb.^[4]

Biography

Dixon hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts, United States.^[1] His family moved to Harlem, in New York City, in 1934.^[2] He enlisted in the Army in 1944; his unit served in Germany before he was discharged in 1946. His studies in music came relatively late in life, at the Hartnette Conservatory of Music (1946–1951), which he attended on the GI Bill.^[5] He studied painting at Boston University and the WPA Arts School and the Art Students League. From 1956 to 1962, he worked at the United Nations, where he founded the UN Jazz Society.^[6]^[7]

In the 1960s Dixon established himself as a major force in the jazz avant-garde.^[2] In 1964, Dixon organized and produced the October Revolution in Jazz, four days of music and discussions at the Cellar Café in Manhattan.^[8] The participants included pianist Cecil Taylor and bandleader Sun Ra. It was the first free-jazz festival of its kind. Dixon later co-founded the Jazz Composers Guild,^[6] a cooperative organization that sought to create bargaining power with club owners and effect greater media visibility. A key participant in the seminal Judson Dance Theater at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, New York City, Dixon was one of the first artists to produce concerts mixing free jazz and improvisational dance, spending several years in a close collaboration with dancer Judith Dunn, with whom he formed the Judith Dunn/Bill Dixon Company.^[9] He recorded relatively little during this period, though he co-led some releases with Archie Shepp^[4] and appeared on Cecil Taylor's Blue Note record Conquistador! in 1966. In 1967, he composed and conducted a score for the United States Information Agency film, The Wealth of a Nation,^[10] produced and directed by William Greaves.^[11]

Dixon was Professor of Music at Bennington College, Vermont, from 1968 to 1995, where he founded and chaired the college's Black Music Division.^[12] From 1970 to 1976, he played "in total isolation from the market places of this music," as he puts it.^[13] Solo trumpet recordings from this period were later released by Cadence Jazz Records and were collected on his self-released multi-CD set Odyssey, along with reproductions of his visual artwork and other material.

He was one of four featured musicians in the Canadian documentary Imagine the Sound (along with Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, and Paul Bley), 1981.

In the later years of his life, he recorded with Cecil Taylor, Tony Oxley,^[6] William Parker, and Rob Mazurek.

Dixon was noted for his extensive use of the pedal register, playing below the trumpet's commonly ascribed range and well into the trombone and tuba registers. He also made extensive use of half-valve techniques and used breath with or without engaging the traditional trumpet embouchure. He largely eschewed mutes, the exception being the Harmon mute, with or without stem.

On June 16, 2010, Bill Dixon died in his sleep at his home in North Bennington, Vermont after suffering from an undisclosed illness.^[2]^[14]

Discography

As leader

Year recorded	Title	Label	Year released	Personnel/Notes
1962	Archie Shepp – Bill Dixon Quartet	Savoy	1962
1964	Bill Dixon 7-tette/Archie Shepp and the New York Contemporary 5	Savoy	1964	Split LP
1966–67	Intents and Purposes	RCA Victor	1967
1970–73	Bill Dixon 1982	Edizioni Ferrari	1982	Limited edition LP
1972–75	Considerations 2	Fore	1981
1970–76	Collection	Cadence	1985
1973–76	Considerations 1	Fore	1981
1980	Bill Dixon in Italy Volume One	Soul Note	1980
1980	Bill Dixon in Italy Volume Two	Soul Note	1981
1981	November 1981	Soul Note	1982
1985	Thoughts	Soul Note	1987
1988	Son of Sisyphus	Soul Note	1990
1993	Vade Mecum	Soul Note	1994
1993	Vade Mecum II	Soul Note	1996
1998	Papyrus Volume I	Soul Note	2000
1998	Papyrus Volume II	Soul Note	2000
1999	Berlin Abbozzi	FMP	2000	With Matthias Bauer, Klaus Koch, Tony Oxley
1970–1992	Odyssey	Archive Editions	2001	Includes Collection, and tracks from Considerations 1 and Bill Dixon 1982
2007	Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra	Thrill Jockey	2008
2007	17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur	AUM Fidelity	2008	live
2008	Tapestries for Small Orchestra	Firehouse 12	2009
2010	Envoi	Victo	2011	live

As sideman or co-leader

Cecil Taylor, Conquistador! (Blue Note, 1968) – recorded in 1966
Franz Koglmann, Opium for Franz (Pipe, 1977) – recorded in 1976; three tracks were reissued on the compilation Opium (Between the Lines, 2001)
The Tony Oxley Celebration Orchestra, The Enchanted Messenger: Live from Berlin Jazz Festival (Soul Note, 1995) – live recorded in 1994
Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley, Taylor/Dixon/Oxley (Victo, 2002) – live
Bill Dixon/Aaron Siegel/Ben Hall, Weight/Counterweight (Brokenresearch, 2009)[2LP]
Cecil Taylor, Duets 1992 (Triple Point, 2019) – recorded in 1992

As producer or composer

Robert F. Pozar Ensemble, Good Golly Miss Nancy (Savoy, 1967) – producer
Ed Curran Quartet, Elysa (Savoy 1968) – recorded in 1967. producer.
The Marzette Watts Ensemble, The Marzette Watts Ensemble (Savoy, 1969) – recorded in 1968. producer and composer.
Marc Levin and his Free Unit, The Dragon Suite (BYG Actuel, 1969) – producer
Jacques Coursil Unit, Way Ahead (BYG, 1969) – composer

References

^ ^a ^b Colin Larkin, ed. (1992). The Guinness Who's Who of Jazz (First ed.). Guinness Publishing. p. 122. ISBN 0-85112-580-8.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Ratliff, Ben (June 19, 2010). "Bill Dixon, 84, Voice of Avant-Garde Jazz, Dies". The New York Times.
^ Dewar, Andrew Raffo (2019). "Without Qualification: Bill Dixon on Black Music and Pedagogy". Jazz & Culture. 2: 101–112. doi:10.5406/jazzculture.2.2019.0101. JSTOR 10.5406/jazzculture.2.2019.0101. S2CID 194353192.
^ ^a ^b "Bill Dixon | Biography & History". AllMusic. Retrieved July 26, 2021.
^ Young, Ben (1998). Dixonia: A Bio-Discography of Bill Dixon. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 4–6. ISBN 0313302758.
^ ^a ^b ^c Fordham, John (July 22, 2010). "Free-jazz trumpeter with a hypnotic, slow-moving sound". The Guardian. London. Retrieved June 12, 2011.
^ Yanow, Scott (2001). The Trumpet Kings: The Players who Shaped the Sound of Jazz Trumpet. San Francisco: Backbeat Books. pp. 131–132. ISBN 9780879306403.
^ Litweiler, John (1984). The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958. Da Capo. p. 138. ISBN 0306803771.
^ "Judith Dunn collection". Archives.nypl.org. Retrieved July 26, 2021.
^ "Wealth Comes in Many Forms: William Greaves' USIA Films". Unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov. July 14, 2015. Retrieved July 26, 2021.
^ "Bill Dixon Interview". Bennington College. May 15, 1975. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
^ "Remembering Bill Dixon, Bennington Faculty Member, 1968-1995". Bennington College. June 17, 2010. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
^ Neff, Joseph (January 25, 2017). "Graded on a Curve: The Bill Dixon Orchestra, Intents and Purposes, and the Archie Shepp-Bill Dixon Quartet, (s/t)". The Vinyl District: The Storefront.
^ West, Michael J. (June 16, 2010). "RIP Experimental Jazz Trumpeter Bill Dixon". Washington City Paper. Retrieved July 26, 2021.