Oliver Nelson

Synopsis

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.

Music Played in Today's Program

Oliver Nelson (1932 – 1975) arr. Eley Sonata Marcus Eley, clarinet; Lucerne DeSa, piano Arabesque 6703

On This Day

Births

• 1770 - possible birthdate of the British-born early American composer, conductor, and music publisher James Hewitt, in Dartmoor;

• 1932 - American composer and jazz arranger Oliver Nelson, in St. Louis;

Deaths

• 1872 - Polish opera composer Stanislaw Moniuszko, age 53, in Warsaw;

• 1907 - Norwegian composer Agathe Backer-Groendahl, age 59, in Kristiania (now Oslo);

• 1951 - Russian-born American double-bass player, conductor and new music patron, Serge Koussevitzky, age 76, in Boston;

Premieres

• 1811 - Weber: opera, "Abu Hassan." In Munich;

• 1883 - Tchaikovsky: "Festival Coronation March," in Moscow (Julian date: May 23); Tchaikovsky conducted this march at the gala opening concert of Carnegie Hall (then called just "The Music Hall")in New York on May 5, 1891;

• 1912 - Chadwick: tone poem "Aphrodite" in Norfolk, Conn., at the Litchfield Festival;

• 1914 - Sibelius: "Oceanides," in Norfolk, Conn., at the Litchfield Festival, with the composer conducting;

• 1935 - Shostakovich: ballet "The Limpid Stream," in Leningrad at the Maliiy Opera Theater;

• 1935 - R. Strauss: opera "Die schweigsame Frau" (The Silent Woman), in Dresden at the Staatsoper;

• 1994 - Philip Glass: opera "La Belle et la Bête" (Beauty and the Beast) based on the film by Jean Cocteau), by the Philip Glass Ensemble at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville (Spain), with Michael Riesman conducting;

• 1997 - Richard Danielpour: ballet "Urban Dances," at New York State Theater by the New York Ballet, choreographed by Miriam Mahdaviani;

• 1999 - Esa-Pekka Salonen: "Five Images after Sappho" for voice and orchestra, at the Ojai Festival in California, with soprano Dawn Upshaw and the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, conducted by the composer.