Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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FRIEDMAN, Don

(Donald Ernest Friedman, b 4 May 1935, San Francisco; d 30 June 2016, Bronx, NY of cancer) Pianist, composer and leader, whose playing was unhindered by category in a career of over 60 years, his technique and his adventurous attitude to harmony allowing him to move easily as a sideman from work with mainstream cornettist Bobby Hackett or Latin-styled jazz with Herbie Mann, through the modernists to the avant-garde.

His parents were immigrants, his father from Lithuania and and his mother from Germany, who encouraged him. He began studying piano at age 4. The family moved to Los Angeles when he was 15 and he soon discovered jazz, initially influenced by Bud Powell. On the west coast he studied at Los Angeles City College, and worked with the likes of Shorty Rogers and Buddy Collette. He first worked in New York in 1956 with Buddy DeFranco, and soon moved there. His own first album was A Day in the City '61 on Riverside, featuring a suite of his own composition.

He recorded with Booker Little on albums such as Out Front, with Max Roach and Eric Dolphy, the sort of album that was regarded as a landmark in the musical turmoil of the 1960s. He appeared on Discovery! '64, the debut album by Charles Lloyd. He toured with reedman and composer Jimmy Giuffre, an uncompromising modernist, yet also worked off and on for years with Clark Terry, whose ebullient popularity was a mainstream, and also held his own in the camp of the pioneers of free jazz, such as Ornette Coleman.

He made critically acclaimed albums inspired by free improvisation with Hungarian guitarist Attila Zoller, Dreams and Explorations '64  and Metamorphosis '66. He played solo, too, and had loyal fans in Japan. Several of his albums won five-star reviews from down beat, and he was highly regarded in that magazine's critics' poll, as well as among musicians, but in the USA he was perpetually a Talent Deserving Wider Recognition. In later years his notable albums included Piano Works VI: From A to Z 2006, a solo tribute to Zoller, and Waltz for Marilyn 2007, with guitarist Peter Bernstein (2007). His last release was Nite Lites 2015, a trio set.