• Home
  • About
    • Doug Ramsey
    • Rifftides
    • Contact
  • Purchase Doug’s Books
    • Poodie James
    • Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond
    • Jazz Matters
    • Other Works
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal
  • rss

Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Correspondence: On Niewood And Mellett

February 17, 2009 by Doug Ramsey

Gap Mangione writes from Rochester, New York, about the deaths of saxophonist Gerry Niewood and guitarist Coleman Mellett in last Thursday’s plane crash near Buffalo. The three were to have played a concert that night in Buffalo with Chuck Mangione: 

We gathered at the hotel Thursday night. Chuck flew in from Florida to conduct and play a concert with the Buffalo Philharmonic. Janet and I drove in so that we could have a Valentine’s dinner that night and so that I could play and solo in the concert on Friday. Kevin Axt (bass player) and Dave Tull (drummer) flew in from LA via Philadelphia (with a dicey landing in Phila.) and lead trumpet Jeff Kievit, who handles Chuck’s orchestra library, drove up from New Jersey so that he wouldn’t have to deal with carrying all the cases of music books on a plane — the one the others were on.

 

Kevin, Dave, Jeff, Janet and I met in the lobby and were excited, happily anticipating the fun of doing an orchestral concert with all its challenges and opportunities. 

But a very joyful evening turned horrifically tragic in a way of which nightmares are made…

 
Although Gerry Niewood usually played and recorded with Chuck, he played on my last three CDs and had great solos on all of them. He also has played concerts with my big band in Rochester and Buffalo. We’ve played together in a variety of settings and formats, mostly with Chuck, for more than four decades. 

Thumbnail image for gerrycolmen.jpg

Gerry Niewood            Coleman Mellett

Coleman Mellett had a way of playing extremely difficult music of all genres and styles, with creativity and capability well beyond his 33 years. It was truly a joyful musical treat to be next to him on stage as we were for the 2007 Friends and Love concert at the Eastman Theater (with Gerry) and the November 2008 pair of concerts with the Syracuse Symphony. We would groove off of one another, reaching for things musically, and nodding and smiling when we got there. 

The world lost two most wonderful people and two magnificent musicians.

Related

Filed Under: Main

Comments

  1. Richard Ferricane says

    February 18, 2009 at 7:15 am

    I saw Gerry Niewood perform so many years ago at a club in E. Paterson, NJ called Gullivers. You could tell he was a very nice guy and obviously so talented. It’s a tragedy that he’s gone.

  2. Peter Ponzol says

    February 19, 2009 at 3:52 pm

    I just learned that Gerry was on that flight. What a tragic loss. Gerry and I go way back to our times in NYC during the 70’s. He did a gig with Gil Evans that I wasn’t able to do. The last time I saw Gerry was at a special Peter Ponzol day in NYC that George Young organized for me. Gerry and his son Adam showed up with the dimensions of a mouthpiece I had refaced back in the late 70’s, written down on an old Selmer price list. A great player and a really wonderful person. My prayers go out to his family.
    Saxophonist Peter Ponzol

  3. Andrew Dowd says

    February 21, 2009 at 12:38 am

    I am a native of Rochester, New York and now live in Portland Oregon. I just read with horror and deep sadness that Gerry Niewood was on that small plane that crashed just outside Buffalo, NY. I just flew from Buffalo back to Portland two days prior to the crash after visiting family in Rochester. I have seen Chuck Mangione and Gerry Niewood in concert together several times in Rochester- and most recently at the Alladin Theater in Portland a few years ago. Chuck, his brother Gap, and Gerry Niewood all grew up in Rochester and were part of the strong jazz scene that evolved out of the Eastman School of Music. What a terrible, cruel loss. I will now have to dig out my dusty vinyl LP of Chuck Mangione’s Friends and Love concert and listen to it again.

  4. Sari Max says

    February 24, 2009 at 1:25 pm

    I am saddened and feel the loss to the whole musician community as well as those audiences priviledged to have heard Gerry Niewood play. He was a gifted, egoless, consummate human being and craftsman.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

Subscribe to RiffTides by Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Rob D on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • W. Royal Stokes on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Larry on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Lucille Dolab on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Donna Birchard on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

Doug’s Picks

We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

As Rifftides readers have undoubtedly noticed, it has been a long time since we posted. We are creating a new post in hopes  that it will open the way to resumption of frequent reports as part of the artsjournal.com mission to keep you up to date on jazz and other matters. Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s stunning new trio album […]

Recent Listening: The New David Friesen Trio CD

David Friesen Circle 3 Trio: Interaction (Origin) Among the dozens of recent releases that deserve serious attention, a few will get it. Among those those receiving it here is bassist David Friesen’s new album.  From the Portland, Oregon, sinecure in which he thrives when he’s not touring the world, bassist Friesen has been performing at […]

Monday Recommendation: Dominic Miller

Dominic Miller Absinthe (ECM) Guitarist and composer Miller delivers power and subtlety in equal measure. Abetted by producer Manfred Eicher’s canny guidance and ECM’s flawless sound and studio presence, Miller draws on inspiration from painters of France’s impressionist period. His liner essay emphasizes the importance to his musical conception of works by Cezanne, Renoir, Lautrec, […]

Recent Listening: Dave Young And Friends

Dave Young, Lotus Blossom (Modica Music) Young, the bassist praised by Oscar Peterson for his “harmonic simpatico and unerring sense of time” when he was a member of Peterson’s trio, leads seven gifted fellow Canadians. His beautifully recorded bass is the underpinning of a relaxed session in which his swing is a force even during […]

Recent Listening: Jazz Is Of The World

Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren, Mare Nostrum III (ACT) This third outing by Mare Nostrum continues the international trio’s close collaboration in a series of albums that has enjoyed considerable success. With three exceptions, the compositions in this installment are by the members of Mare Nostrum. It opens with one the French accordionist Galliano […]

Monday Recommendation: Thelonious Monk’s Works In Full

Kimbrough, Robinson, Reid, Drummond: Monk’s Dreams(Sunnyside) The subtitle of this invaluable 6-CD set is The Complete Compositions Of Thelonious Sphere Monk. By complete, Sunnyside means that the box contains six CDs with 70 tunes that Monk wrote beginning in the early years when his music was generally assumed to be an eccentric offshoot of bebop, […]

More Doug's Picks

Blogroll

All About Jazz
JerryJazzMusician
Carol Sloane: SloaneView
Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel
The Gig: Nate Chinen
Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong
Don Heckman: The International Review Of Music
Ted Panken: Today is The Question
George Colligan: jazztruth
Brilliant Corners
Jazz Music Blog: Tom Reney
Brubeck Institute
Darcy James Argue
Jazz Profiles: Steve Cerra
Notes On Jazz: Ralph Miriello
Bob Porter: Jazz Etc.
be.jazz
Marc Myers: Jazz Wax
Night Lights
Jason Crane:The Jazz Session
JazzCorner
I Witness
ArtistShare
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus
Prague Jazz
Russian Jazz
Jazz Quotes
Jazz History Online
Lubricity

Personal Jazz Sites
Chris Albertson: Stomp Off
Armin Buettner: Crownpropeller’s Blog
Cyber Jazz Today, John Birchard
Dick Carr’s Big Bands, Ballads & Blues
Donald Clarke’s Music Box
Noal Cohen’s Jazz History
Bill Crow
Easy Does It: Fernando Ortiz de Urbana
Bill Evans Web Pages
Dave Frishberg
Ronan Guilfoyle: Mostly Music
Bill Kirchner
Mike Longo
Jan Lundgren (Friends of)
Willard Jenkins/The Independent Ear
Ken Joslin: Jazz Paintings
Bruno Leicht
Earl MacDonald
Books and CDs: Bill Reed
Marvin Stamm

Tarik Townsend: It’s A Raggy Waltz
Steve Wallace: Jazz, Baseball, Life and Other Ephemera
Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest
Jessica Williams

Other Culture Blogs
Terry Teachout
DevraDoWrite
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
On An Overgrown Path

Journalism
PressThink: Jay Rosen
Second Draft, Tim Porter
Poynter Online

Related

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in