William Robert “Bill” Dixon was an American composer, improviser, visual artist, activist, and educator. Dixon was one of the seminal figures in free jazz and late twentieth-century contemporary music. His was also a prominent voice arguing for artist's rights and insisting, through words and deeds, on the cultural and aesthetic richness of the African American music tradition. He played the trumpet, flugelhorn, and piano, often using electronic delay and reverb.
Biography
Dixon hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts. His family moved to Harlem, in New York City, in 1934. He enlisted in the Army in 1944; his unit served in Germany before he was discharged in 1946. His studies in music came relatively late in life, at the Hartnette Conservatory of Music, which he attended on the GI Bill. He studied painting at Boston University and the WPA Arts School and the Art Students League. From 1956 to 1962, he worked at the United Nations, where he founded the UN Jazz Society. In the 1960s Dixon established himself as a major force in the jazz avant-garde. In 1964, Dixon organized and produced the 'October Revolution in Jazz', four days of music and discussions at the Cellar Café in Manhattan. The participants included pianist Cecil Taylor and bandleader Sun Ra. It was the first free-jazz festival of its kind. Dixon later co-founded the Jazz Composers Guild, a cooperative organization that sought to create bargaining power with club owners and effect greater media visibility. A key participant in the seminal Judson Dance Theater at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, New York City, Dixon was one of the first artists to produce concerts mixing free jazz and improvisational dance, spending several years in a close collaboration with dancer Judith Dunn, with whom he formed the Judith Dunn/Bill Dixon Company. He recorded relatively little during this period, though he co-led some releases with Archie Shepp and appeared on Cecil Taylor's Blue Note record Conquistador! in 1966. In 1967, he composed and conducted a score for the United States Information Agency film, , produced and directed by William Greaves. Dixon was Professor of Music at Bennington College, Vermont, from 1968 to 1995, where he founded and chaired the college's Black Music Division. From 1970 to 1976 he played "in total isolation from the market places of this music," as he puts it. Solo trumpet recordings from this period were later released by Cadence Jazz Records and were collected on his self-released multi-CD set Odyssey, along with reproductions of his visual artwork and other material. He was one of four featured musicians in the Canadian documentary Imagine the Sound, 1981. In the later years of his life, he recorded with Cecil Taylor, Tony Oxley, William Parker, and Rob Mazurek. Dixon was noted for his extensive use of the pedal register, playing below the trumpet's commonly ascribed range and well into the trombone and tuba registers. He also made extensive use of half-valve techniques and used breath with or without engaging the traditional trumpet embouchure. He largely eschewed mutes, the exception being the harmon mute, with or without stem. On June 16, 2010, Bill Dixon died in his sleep at his home in North Bennington, Vermont after suffering from an undisclosed illness.
