Kenny Wheeler -

Kenny Wheeler (Jan. 14, 1930 — Sept. 18, 2014) was a Canadian-born composer, trumpeter, and flugelhornist, active on the U.K. jazz scene for five decades. Between 1963 and 1975, he played on albums by Georgie Fame, John Surman, Tony Oxley, Tubby Hayes, Michael Gibbs, Alan Skidmore, Bob Downes, Norma Winstone, Anthony Reebop Kwaku Baah, Mike Westbrook, Anthony Braxton, Ian Carr’s Nucleus, and the Globe Unity Orchestra.

In 1976, Wheeler released the album Gnu High on ECM with backing by Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette. He then teamed with Winstone and pianist John Taylor in the chamber-jazz trio Azimuth, which made five albums across eighteen years. During the 1980s and ’90s, he released further albums on ECM and appeared on recordings by David Sylvian, Rabih Abou-Khalil, Jane Ira Bloom, Steve Coleman, and Michel Portal, among others.

Background

Kenny Wheeler was born Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler on Jan. 14, 1930, in Toronto, Ontario; the son of dance trombonist Wilf Wheeler and pianist Mabel Reid. Wilf gave the 12-year-old Wheeler a cornet, and Wheeler learned basic technique in a Windsor Sea Cadet band. The family settled in St. Catharines late in 1945, where Wheeler played with pianist Art Talbot and other local teenagers.

Wheeler studied trumpet with Ross MacClanathan and harmony with composer John Weinzweig at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He went to Montreal in 1952 for music-education studies at McGill University but left the course after a few days. School friend Gene Lees encouraged Wheeler to try England, and Wheeler used his tuition money for a steamship ticket to Britain.

Wheeler reached London in October 1952 and worked at a post office while he sought engagements through the West End musicians’ network around Archer Street. Saxophonist Freddy Courtney hired Wheeler for a summer 1953 engagement on the Isle of Wight. Bandleader Roy Fox took Wheeler on a subsequent ballroom and hotel tour across England. Wheeler followed with 1954/55 stints behind Trinidadian clarinetist Carl Barriteau and Scottish saxophonist Tommy Whittle, whose octet cut four tracks for Esquire Records with the young trumpeter.

In late 1956, French saxophonist Buddy Featherstonhaugh hired Wheeler for his New Quintet, which cut a Nixa session with saxophonist Bobby Wellins. Wheeler followed with 1957–59 stints behind orchestra guitarist Vic Lewis and saxist/bandleaders Don Rendell and John Dankworth, who hired Wheeler for the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival.

Wheeler also studied serial composition with pianist Richard Rodney Bennett and counterpoint with Chicago composer Bill Russo. In 1966, drummer John Stevens featured Wheeler at the Little Theatre Club and hired the trumpeter for the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. Wheeler played flugelhorn on the March sessions for Challenge and continued between free improvisation and conventional jazz engagements.

Wheeler paused for three months in 1967 after surgery on an impacted wisdom tooth. Dankworth commissioned an orchestral composition, which Wheeler based the adventure novel Don Quixote by 17th-century Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Wheeler took the completed score into the March 1968 sessions for Windmill Tilter – The Story of Don Quixote.

Select discography:

Windmill Tilter – The Story of Don Quixote (1969 • Ken Wheeler and The John Dankworth Orchestra)
Gnu High (1976)
Song for Someone (1977)
Deer Wan (1978)
Around 6 (1980)
Double, Double You (1984)
Gigolo (1986 • Tiziana Simona & Kenny Wheeler)
Flutter By, Butterfly (1988 • Kenny Wheeler Quintet)
Visions (1988 • Tim Brady, Kenny Wheeler, L’Orchestre de chambre de Montréal & Wanda Kaluzny)
Music for Large & Small Ensembles (1990)
The Widow in the Window (1990 • Kenny Wheeler Quintet)