Virtuoso trumpet player Kenny Wheeler was also a talented composer.
Kenny Wheeler, the Canadian-born jazz musician who died at 84 in England on Sept. 18, was not a typical trumpet player. He didn't try to dazzle listeners with virtuoso displays, like Dizzy Gillespie or Freddie Hubbard, nor did his playing command attention through volume or stratospheric excursions, as Maynard Ferguson or Doc Severinsen did.
Instead, Mr. Wheeler's understated performances offered a lyricism and attention to melodic nuance that made him, despite his unassuming demeanour, one of the most influential composers and improvisers in the genre.
The singer Norma Winstone, a frequent collaborator, described him as "the Duke Ellington of our time." Yet as strongly as his writing played off a song-based traditionalism, Mr. Wheeler always maintained an element of the unpredictable in his work, musical leftturns that were surprising yet supremely logical.
Over the course of his career, he worked with some of the biggest names in jazz, from mainstream artists such as Keith Jarrett, Lee Konitz and Bill Frisell to noted avant-gardists as Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker and Steve Coleman.
His influence even spilled over into the pop world, and he recorded with rockers ranging from Joni Mitchell to Bill Bruford to David Sylvian.
The fourth of eight children, Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler was born in Toronto on January 14, 1930.
His father, Wilf, was an accountant and occasional trombonist, and the family moved around the province for some years before settling in St. Catharines, Ont. It was at high school there that young Kenny, who had taken up the cornet, was introduced to bebop.
"I was never good at playing strict bebop, because I liked to play around with the beat a lot – to almost play rubato over the beat," he recalled in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
"I've never been one for digging into it and playing on the [beat]. Probably a lot of rhythm sections get frustrated with this" – he chuckled – "but, well, it's the way I play, so they'll have to take it."
While in St. Catharines, Mr. Wheeler befriended the writer and lyricist Gene Lees, who was then an aspiring jazz singer.
Both dreamed of a career in jazz, but when opportunities failed to appear, the 22-year-old trumpeter booked passage for England, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Like Aesop's tortoise, his progress in the music world was slow but steady.
He found regular work as a session musician and studied with Bill Russo, who was known for his writing for the Stan Kenton Orchestra, as well as with the film composer Richard Rodney Bennett.
In 1959 he was recruited by saxophonist John Dankworth and appeared with the Dankworth big band at the Newport Jazz Festival.
Eight years later, he was invited to compose a suite for the band, which he based on the novel Don Quixote. Called Windmill Tilter, it was widely acclaimed and helped build his reputation as a composer.
It also marked the beginning of his association with the bassist Dave Holland.
"What happened was, the bass player with [Dankworth's] band injured his finger the night before the session, and so they needed a substitute for the recording," Mr. Holland recalled in a 2007 interview.
"Kenny had remembered hearing this young bass player at a rehearsal band – which at that time was me – and suggested to John, 'Why don't we give him a call? I think he could probably do the job.' And that's really when I got to know Kenny."
In addition to the Dankworth session, the two played together in drummer John Stevens's groundbreaking avant-garde group, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble.
At the time, it surprised many on the London jazz scene that Mr. Wheeler – by then an established mainstream figure – would be interested in free improvisation.
But as Mr. Wheeler put it later, "I think each side of it helps the other. Free playing helps the straight-ahead playing, and the straight-ahead playing helps the free playing."
By 1974, Mr. Wheeler was making waves internationally.
Both he and Mr. Holland were recruited for what would become an acclaimed quartet led by alto saxophonist Anthony Braxton, the first jazz artist signed to Clive Davis's new label Arista Records.
A year later, Mr. Wheeler made the first of many albums as a leader for the ECM Records label. Called Gnu High, it featured Mr. Holland on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums, and was noteworthy for being the last album pianist Keith Jarrett ever made as a sideman.
Gnu High also reflected Mr. Wheeler's fondness for wordplay in his album and song titles.
"It was kind of a joke," he said later. "I mean, Americans probably would say, 'This is a new high in music.' But I've always liked animals, like goats and gnus, so I thought I would call it Gnu High.
"I like to pick titles that maybe have a double meaning, or a little bit of humour in them."
Other Wheelerisms included the album titles Deer Wan; Flutter By, Butterfly; and the classically Canadian Double Double, You.
While his approach to language reflected a quiet whimsy, there was deep logic and singular insight in the way he wrote music.
"Kenny [had] a very distinctive compositional approach, and one that has been a very important influence on me as a composer," said Mr. Holland.
In particular, Mr. Wheeler's writing was able to present very complex harmonies without seeming overly abstract, because of the way his harmonic ideas were woven into the melodic structure of his pieces.
"The melody and the chords work together to create a fabric that is very logical … a very unique way of connecting those two elements.
"Kenny's compositional approach really represented a new development of the harmonic language and forms."
He continued to compose and arrange for big band, and his work was recorded by Maynard Ferguson's big band, the Munich Jazz Orchestra and Nova Scotia's Maritime Jazz Orchestra, among others.
He also wrote for symphony orchestras, string quartets and brass ensembles.
But his most memorable albums tended to involve small ensembles.
In 1977, he joined Ms. Winstone and pianist John Taylor in the trio Azimuth. With typical self-effacement, Mr. Wheeler described the group's origins as mere happenstance.
"Norma wanted to do a record with ECM, and [John] suggested, 'Well, why don't you add Kenny Wheeler to it?'" he told an interviewer. "So that's how Azimuth was born."
However casual its origins, the trio held together for two decades. Working without a rhythm section, the three created music of unusual intimacy.
Mr. Wheeler and Ms. Winstone also collaborated on songwriting, and even after the three stopped working as a trio, Mr. Wheeler recorded regularly with both.
In 1997, Mr. Wheeler recruited alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, guitarist Bill Frisell and Mr. Holland to make what is probably his most critically acclaimed recording, Angel Song.
Hauntingly beautiful and achingly atmospheric, the music carried the usual beauty of Mr. Wheeler's wistful, lyric melodies while deftly exploiting the contrapuntal interplay of the improvisations.
In all, he released some 37 albums as a leader, the last being a sextet recording called Six By Six, in 2013.
A dedicated proponent of jazz education, Mr. Wheeler was happy to lead workshops and masterclass sessions, and was a founding patron of the Royal Academy of Music's Junior Jazz program in London.
Although he spent most of his professional life away from Canada, he was nonetheless greatly appreciated here.
In 2007, he was paid tribute by the Art of Jazz organization with an all-star concert in Toronto, featuring Mr. Konitz, Mr. Holland and Ms. Winstone.
His last Canadian appearance was in 2011 at the Ottawa Jazz Festival, where he performed with two of the brightest young modernists in jazz, pianist Myra Melford of Trio M, and saxophonist Jon Irabagon, who plays with Dave Douglas and the group Mostly Other People Do the Killing.
Through it all, he remained resolutely modest about his accomplishments.
As he told the jazz magazine DownBeat in 1997, "I hardly ever listen to anything I've played … When you're improvising, you don't have time to judge or fiddle about with what you're playing. It's not like composing, where you can take your time. If I could get into the same trance-like state that I get in when I'm writing, I could play a good solo. But I've never reached it."
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