ISLAMABAD: Ahmad Jamal, the renowned jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer, has died at 92, according to his wife.
According to his daughter Sumayah Jamal, the cause was prostate cancer. Ahmad Jamal was a lifetime friend of Miles Davis and an inspiration to a generation of artists.
He was known for his sparse playing style, frequently placing pauses between notes, and critics praised his “less is more dynamics.” Jamal, who referred to jazz as “American classical music,” stated during his life that he preferred to honor the “spaces” in the music. He began his seven-decade jazz career as a teenager during the dazzling showmanship of the bebop era, but his approach developed quickly. His laid-back technique rapidly became influential, and his album of 1958, At the Pershing: But Not for Me -had one of the bestselling instrumental records of that time.
The magazine The New Yorker stated last year, to commemorate the release of some of his unreleased recordings, that in the 1950s, “his musical concept was one of the great innovations of the time, even if its spare, audacious originality was lost on many listeners.” Miles Davis, Jamal’s close friend, said, “All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.”
Davis wrote in his autobiography that Jamal “knocked me out with his concept of space, lightness of touch, understatement, and the way he phrased notes, chords, and passages.” Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett, among others, echoed this sentiment. Even in the following decades, his impact was felt, with hip-hop artists such as Nas and De La Soul sampling his piano chords.
Jamal has received numerous honors throughout his career, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 and France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2007. In an interview with the New York Times in 2022, Jamal stated that “he is still evolving; whenever he sits down at the piano, he still comes up with some fresh ideas.
