Richie Beirach, an American jazz pianist and composer, handed away final Monday, January 26 in southern Germany. He was 78.
Born in Brooklyn, Beirach collaborated with saxophonist David Liebman, starting within the late Nineteen Sixties. Moreover, he was celebrated as a soloist and collaborator. Later, Beirach settled in Leipzig, Germany the place he taught jazz piano on the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Conservatory. He collaborated extensively with ECM producer Manfred Eicher.
Richie Beirach’s strategy to jazz was influenced by classical music. In a current Substack post, Ethan Iverson writes, “Beirach had not simply the hearth and a superb piano method, but additionally a dissonant harmonic strategy that embraced the modernist ethos of Twentieth-century composers like Bela Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, and Arnold Schoenberg.”
This may be heard in two works by Beirach which have develop into jazz requirements, Leaving (1978) and Elm (1979).
Leaving
Elm
Gargoyles
Beirach’s Gargoyles is rhapsodic and hauntingly dissonant. This 1986 recording contains a collaboration with saxophonist Dave Liebman.
Pendulum
Recordings
Featured Picture: “Richie Beirach acting at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, Half Moon Bay CA within the Eighties,” {photograph} by Brian McMillen
