Al Foster, drummer for Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, has died : NPR

Jazz drummer Al Foster, photographed in Paris in 1980.

Andre Clergeat/Gamma-Rapho by way of Getty Photographs

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Andre Clergeat/Gamma-Rapho by way of Getty Photographs

Al Foster, whose beautifully alert and versatile drumming shaped a swirling present in fashionable jazz for greater than 60 years, propelling bands led by Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and lots of others, died on Wednesday in his New York Metropolis condo. He was 82.

Bonnie Rose Steinberg, his accomplice of greater than 47 years, confirmed his loss of life to NPR Music. She mentioned Foster died from a severe sickness.

Foster had a robust but supple beat, and the intuitive capacity to shift his rhythmic stability to swimsuit the musical setting. His swinging experience cymbal may convey the crisp authority of bebop or the deep pull of modal jazz, and he offered the beating backbeat in some outstanding fusion bands.

“He knocked me out as a result of he had such a groove and he would simply lay it proper in there,” Davis wrote in Miles: The Autobiography. The trumpeter honored that bedrock groove with a hallucinatory funk composition titled “Mr. Foster,” recorded in the course of the periods for his 1972 album On the Nook. Becoming a member of Davis’ working band, Foster appeared on studio albums like Massive Enjoyable and stay albums like Darkish Magus and Agharta. 

However Foster most well-liked to swing, and he did so mightily in a variety of notable settings. He labored on and off with Rollins, one in every of his musical heroes, for a number of many years. Foster additionally seems on a defining double album by one other tenor saxophonist, Joe Henderson, The State of the Tenor, Vols. 1 & 2, recorded at The Village Vanguard in 1985.

The bassist on that recording, Ron Carter, additionally labored alongside Foster in teams led by alto saxophonist Artwork Pepper and pianists McCoy Tyner and Horace Silver, amongst others. In 1978, Foster’s sterling popularity in straight-ahead jazz circles was made manifest in a record-label supergroup branded the Milestones Jazzstars, which toured extensively and launched a stay album.

Foster made his debut as a pacesetter that very same 12 months: the funk-flexing Combined Roots, on CBS Data. However he was sparse together with his solo releases within the ensuing years, turning a nook in 2003 with Oh! — credited to ScoLoHoFo, an all-star collective additionally that includes guitarist John Scofield, saxophonist Joe Lovano, bassist Dave Holland.

Circulating extra extensively as a bandleader from that time on, Foster enlisted youthful gamers just like the saxophonist Eli Degibri and bassist Doug Weiss; they joined him for a Stay from the Village Vanguard broadcast on NPR in 2008.

Throughout the final decade, Foster was a stalwart on the Higher West Aspect membership Smoke, whose Smoke Classes label launched his two most up-to-date albums. Reflections, from 2022, encompasses a quintet with trumpeter Nicholas Payton, saxophonist Chris Potter, pianist Kevin Hays and bassist Vicente Archer; Foster referred to as it “my greatest report but.”

Aloysius Tyrone Foster was born on Jan. 18, 1943, in Richmond, Va. He grew up on a hundred and fortieth Avenue and Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem, in a household of musical lovers. His father was a bass participant, and his older brother performed congas; he additionally had a youthful sister and two youthful brothers. He confirmed curiosity within the drums as a toddler, banging on pots and pans; round age 12, he grew to become impressed by Max Roach, a rhythmic architect of bebop.

Foster was 20 when he logged his first recording credit score, on trumpeter Blue Mitchell’s 1964 album The Factor to Do, alongside a younger Chick Corea on piano. Foster additionally performed on Mitchell’s subsequent two albums, and on one of many first recordings by pianist Monty Alexander, earlier than linking up with Miles Davis, with whom he struck a private bond.

Throughout a interval within the mid-’70s when Davis retreated from performing, Foster grew to become a confidante. “He was an actual religious particular person, good to be round,” Davis later wrote. “It was Al that saved me in contact with the music scene after I was out for these years. I used to speak to him virtually on daily basis after I was retired. I actually trusted him throughout that point.”

Along with Bonnie Rose Steinberg, Foster is survived by 4 daughters from a earlier marriage — Michelle, Kierra, Monique and Simone — and 6 grandchildren. His son with Steinberg, Brandyn, predeceased him in 2018.

Foster remained a significant presence on drums to the top, main his personal band in an engagement at Smoke earlier this 12 months. “I am getting previous,” he admitted a number of years in the past, in an interview together with his fellow drummer Joe Farnsworth for DownBeat journal. “You recognize, I’m not as quick as I was. But it surely’s extra recent concepts. I am at all times arising with new stuff after I apply. As a result of recently, I apply on daily basis — drums, two units in my front room. I simply sit there for a couple of minutes, , virtually like, ‘Whatcha gonna present me immediately?'”