ROME – Jazz musician Tony Scott, a clarinetist, composer and arranger who worked with such greats as Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, has died, the House of Jazz said Saturday. He was 85.
Scott died Wednesday in Rome, where he had lived for decades, according to a statement from the Italian center for the promotion of jazz.
“His death fills jazz audiences all over the world with sadness,” the statement said.
Scott, who also played the saxophone, worked with many of the greatest jazz musicians over a career that spanned decades and continents, playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughan.
“I think a clarinet can be played as strongly as a saxophone or a trumpet,” Scott wrote, according to his Web site. “It can be a delicate instrument, but it can be robust, can be played with the vitality that some guys have on the other horns.”
Scott was born Anthony Joseph Sciacca in Morristown, N.J., and was considered a forerunner of world music – he was among the first jazz musicians to mix the genre with other influences.
His travels took him to Europe, Africa and Asia. He eventually settled in Rome, becoming a fixture of the Italian jazz scene.
Scott took an interest in photography, and documented the work and life of jazz greats in a series of pictures that were displayed in an exhibit in France in the late 1980s. He wrote an autobiography called “Bird, Lady and Me” in honor of Parker and Holiday.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
