In Memoriam: John McNeil, 1948–2024

By Michael J. West I Oct. 2, 2024

McNeil’s virtuosity as a player was unimpeachable and his imagination as an improviser was vast.
(Photo: Eldon Phillips)

John McNeil, a trumpeter, composer and educator who built an accomplished and progressive career in jazz despite a genetic disorder that continuously challenged his abilities, died Sept. 27. He was 76.

His death was confirmed by Sunnyside Records, in a post on X.

Self-taught, with finishing schools that included the Horace Silver Quintet and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band, McNeil cultivated a distinctive, original sound: even, soft-voiced and built on short notes and subtly complex harmonies. His virtuosity as a player was unimpeachable and his imagination as an improviser was vast, with the trumpeter as comfortable and facile in the standard repertoire as on his own compositions.

He was also a formidable educator, teaching for decades at the New England Conservatory in Boston. His students included trumpeter Dave Douglas, pianist Randy Ingram and saxophonist Bill McHenry, the latter with whom he co-led a quartet in the late 2000s. He also wrote or co-wrote several books, the most prominent being The Art of Jazz Trumpet and Flexus: Trumpet Calisthenics for the Modern Improvisor (with Laurie Frink).

Despite his fearsome body of work, however, McNeil was largely an insider’s musician, acclaimed by critics and adored by fellow musicians but little known to the larger jazz audience. This was largely an effect of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease: a genetic disorder of the nervous system. McNeil had a rare variation that attacked the muscles of his face, making it difficult and at times impossible to play the trumpet. He sat out much of the 1980s and ’90s from the scene, woodshedding and teaching instead; in addition, his early records — on the Danish label Steeplechase — flickered in and out of availability.

However, McNeil made a comeback in 1997; he made another in 2013, when surgery helped him recover from years of degenerating physical technique. In recent years, however, he had once again stepped away from performance.

John Patrick McNeil was born March 23, 1948, in Yreka, California. As a toddler, he exhibited problems with his legs, then later a twisted spine. The result was a childhood full of various leg and back braces that subjected him to bullying and humiliation until he had surgery at 16. He was assumed to have muscular dystrophy (which had afflicted his uncle); it wasn’t until a visit to the Mayo Clinic as a teenager that McNeil was properly diagnosed.

Around the age of 10, though, McNeil saw Louis Armstrong performing on television, which inspired him to learn to play trumpet. With little musical education infrastructure in the small town of Yreka, he taught himself to play despite warnings from doctors that physical exercise would only hurt him.

He then arrived in New York in 1974, where he passed an audition for Horace Silver’s quintet. He also worked with the Jones-Lewis big band before he began working as a leader in his own right; he made his first recording, Embarkation, in 1978. Fifteen more albums followed over the next 40 years, including three with Hush Point, a quartet he led in the 2010s featuring saxophonist Jeremy Udden, bassist Aryeh Kobrinsky and drummer Anthony Pinciotti.

McNeil is survived by trombonist Lolly Bienenfeld, his partner of more than 40 years. DB