Word from the Jazz Programmer Listserv that alto saxophonist Frank Morgan has passed away:

We’ve just been notified that Frank Morgan passed away peacefully from kidney failure this Friday morning, near his family and friends in his hometown of Minneapolis. He had just completed a successful European tour, even though he was worried about his health. A memorial gathering is planned in his longtime home town of Taos, New Mexico, on what would have been
his 74th, birthday, December 23.…

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Alto saxophonist Frank Morgan, born in 1933, is one of the last great bop storytellers and living connections to that age of music. He’s also one of the last musicians left from the glory days of Los Angeles’ Central Avenue scene, a school-of-the-streets from which Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus, Art Farmer, and many others graduated…

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