Jacques Coursil

Jacques Coursil (March 31, 1938 – June 26, 2020) was a French composer, jazz trumpeter, scholar, and professor of literature, linguistics, and philosophy.

Early life Coursil was born in Paris, France, of Martinican parents. At the age of 14, Coursil had the opportunity to hear saxophonist Don Byas, who made a deep impression, "with a white suit, white shoes, a shiny saxophone, playing so sweetly."

In 1958, Coursil left for Africa, spending three years in Mauritania and Senegal, where he befriended Léopold Sédar Senghor, politician, poet and theorist of Négritude. Regarding his musical interests at the time, Coursil stated: "I firmly intended to deconstruct the whole apparatus of rhythm. I wanted to 'destroy' the beat and harmony too. So, I wanted to play atonal without any rhythmic framework. I also wanted to stop playing scales, to get away from melody."

Later that year, Coursil joined Sunny Murray's band, leading to his first appearance on record as part of the January 1966 session for the drummer's eponymous album on ESP-Disk. Recordings of his participation in a 1967 jam session with Laurence Cook, Warren Gale, Perry Robinson, and Steve Tintweiss were released in 2021 by the Inky Dot label with the title Ave B Free Jam.

Coursil also began rehearsing with Sun Ra's band (he recalled, "the saxophone section was so great, the best since Duke Ellington"), and joined Bill Dixon's University of the Streets orchestra as well as the Judith Dunn/Bill Dixon Company. and a realization of Black Suite with Jones, Guérin, and Delcloo plus Anthony Braxton on contrabass clarinet and Burton Greene on piano. Upon his return to New York, Coursil taught French and mathematics at the United Nations International School, where one of his students was John Zorn.

Academic career and hiatus from music In 1975, Coursil departed for France, where he resumed his studies, leading to an Ph.D. in linguistics in 1977, and a second Ph.D. in applied science in 1992, both from the University of Caen, where he also taught literature, linguistics, and philosophy of language. Over the coming years, he established a reputation as an expert in the literature of Édouard Glissant as well as Saussurean linguistics, and published a book titled La fonction muette du langage: Essai de linguistique générale contemporaine (The Silent Function of Language: Essay in General Contemporary Linguistics) (2000). While at Cornell, he published a number of scholarly articles on postcolonialism, Négritude, and writers Wole Soyinka and Maryse Condé. He reflected: "The music was still there... I never left the instrument. It was part of my well-being, my breathing. If I don't have a trumpet I might just have a stroke. So I kept on playing. It's like a subterranean river that suddenly reaches the surface." In 2004, at a studio in a wooded area near Cornell, and with the encouragement of John Zorn, he recorded Minimal Brass, an album of multiple, overdubbed trumpet parts on which he employed circular breathing, a technique he learned from fellow trumpeter Jimmy Owens before leaving New York.

Minimal Brass was followed by an oratorio titled Clameurs, recorded in Martinique in 2006 and released by Universal Music France the following year. The work, which employs spoken texts accompanied by trumpet and percussion, as well as choral passages, is based on writings by Martinicans such as Frantz Fanon, Monchoachi, and Édouard Glissant, as well as the pre-Islamic poet Antar. In 2014, he recorded FreeJazzArt (Sessions for Bill Dixon) with bassist Alan Silva, and in 2020, he finalized the recording of a work that had been in progress since 2018, titled Hostipitality Suite.

In 2015, Coursil published a book titled Valeurs pures: le paradigme sémiotique de Ferdinand de Saussure (Pure Values: The Semiotic Paradigm Of Ferdinand De Saussure). He died in Belgium on June 26, 2020.

Discography As leader or co-leader Way Ahead (BYG, 1969) Black Suite (BYG, 1971) Minimal Brass (Tzadik, 2005) Clameurs (Universal Music France, 2007) Trails of Tears (Universal Music France, 2010) FreeJazzArt (Sessions for Bill Dixon) (RogueArt, 2014) Hostipitality Suite (Savvy, 2020) Ave B Free Jam (Inky Dot, 1967 ) with Laurence Cook, Warren Gale, Perry Robinson, and Steve Tintweiss

With Burton Greene Aquariana (BYG, 1969)

With Sunny Murray Sunny Murray (ESP-Disk, 1966)

With Rocé Identité en crescendo (Emarcy, 2008)

With Frank Wright Your Prayer (ESP-Disk, 1967) The Complete ESP-Disk Recordings (ESP-Disk, 2005)