Muhal Richard Abrams

Composer, arranger, and pianist Muhal Richard Abrams was largely a self-taught musician who was deeply influenced by the bop innovations of the late Bud Powell. Abrams was a beacon in the jazz community as a co-founder (and first president), in 1965, of Chicago's legendary vanguard music institution, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). While Abrams was well known as a mentor to three generations of younger musicians -- born in 1930, he was a decade older than his closest peer in the AACM -- as a bandleader and professor at the Banff Center, Columb...