Dr. Billy Taylor was a national voice for jazz, serving as an ambassador of sorts and elevating jazz to a distinctly American art form till his death in 2010. A jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator, Dr. Taylor played with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald throughout the 1940s.
Dr. Taylor was also on the original steering committee for the Jazz Ministry with Pastor Gensel in 1965. He earned his doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was the first to contextualize jazz as “America’s classical music."
Dr. Taylor’s ability to make jazz understandable for many different people in different contexts, while remaining true to jazz’s beginning and significance in black art and history, served as one of his greatest strengths. From his radio shows on National Public Radio to his time as artistic director for Jazz at Lincoln Center, to teaching children in summer classes or professionals in master seminars, Dr. Taylor had an insight, joy, and deep appreciation for jazz that connected with many.
One of his important projects was Jazzmobile, a community-based art project cofounded in 1964 with the Harlem Cultural Council and arts patron Daphne Arnstein to bring jazz back to the community, sponsoring lectures, demonstrations, and artist residencies in public schools, producing outdoor concerts and special programs for underserved youth, and conducting workshops and clinics in the neighborhood of Harlem.
