Jazz
Kent Carter died on Wednesday 30 September at the age of 87. Since 1991 he had lived in Juillaguet, a village in the Charente, where he and his wife, the dancer Michala Marcus, ran an artists’ residence.
He was born on 14 June 1939 in Hanover, New Hampshire, and settled in France in 1968. The work he is remembered for is his bass playing with Steve Lacy: almost twenty years of it, from 1966, and a fixed place in the group the saxophonist put together in 1977 with Irene Aebi, Steve Potts and drummer Oliver Johnson.
Before that and alongside it came Paul and Carla Bley, Don Cherry, the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, Mal Waldron, Roswell Rudd, Noah Howard, Alan Silva and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble.
He led seven records of his own, nearly all for the British label Emanem: “Beauvais Cathedral” (1976), “Lost In June” (Ictus, 1977), “The Willisau Suites” (1984), “The Juillaguet Collection” (1996) — recorded at his house — “Intersections” (2006), “Summer Works 2009” (2010) and “Oratorios And Songs” (2010).
No cause has been given.
Text by Aina Torrents