Bill Dixon October 5, 1925 - June 16, 2010
Maureen Forrester July 25, 1930 - June 16, 2010
Garry Shider July 24, 1953 - June 16, 2010

The pop myth is that celebrity deaths come in threes. That's silly, of course; there are enough celebrity deaths that, with no time limit, a grouping of three will inevitably occur. But in the space of one day yesterday, the world of music suffered three grievous losses, one each from the pop, jazz, and classical genres. By the standards of People magazine, they might not be celebrities, but they were all revered icons in their separate fields.

Avant-garde jazz trumpeter Bill Dixon never worked in the mainstream, not even close after a (now-rare) first LP where the band co-led by saxophonist Archie Shepp covered “Somewhere”; they split after Dixon quit playing in 1963 to rework his embouchure. When he began playing again the following year, their paths had diverged so much that their follow-up LP (like its predecessor, on Savoy, where Dixon worked) found Dixon leading a septet on one side and Shepp leading the New York Contemporary 5 on the other side, with neither playing in the other's group. It was later that year that, fed up with the attitude of New York jazz club owners towards the avant-garde, Dixon put together the October Revolution in Jazz concert series and the Jazz Composers Guild. Those acts and playing on Cecil Taylor's 1966 Blue Note LP Conquistador! are all many jazz fans know about him, because after a 1967 RCA LP went nowhere, Dixon devoted his time to teaching, mostly at Bennington College in Vermont (1968-96, except for 1971-72 at the University of Wisonsin). Though he recorded some of his work, notably unaccompanied trumpet pieces, in the '70s, they weren't released until the past two decades.

He reappeared on record in 1980 thanks to the Italian label Soul Note, which released a total of nine Dixon albums from then through 2000. In total these albums -- In Italy vols. 1 & 2, November 1981, Thoughts, Son of Sisyphus, Vade Mecum I & II, Papyrus I & II -- are one of the most remarkable bodies of work in the history of jazz, revealing Dixon's remarkable abstract composing and a highly subtle (and influential) style of trumpet playing focused on timbre, quiet tones, and space. Over the past decade he utilized electronics and spread his work out over a variety of labels, one album apiece; the most striking of them might be 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur: In Concert at Vision Festival XII (AUM Fidelity) (reviewed here). He was active until the end of his life.

Contralto Maureen Forrester's debut recital (at a YWCA in her home town of Montreal) came in 1953. Later that year she made her Montreal Symphony debut under Klemperer in Beethoven's Ninth; three years later she debuted in New York at Town Hall, and a year after that she was singing Mahler's “Resurrection” Symphony under Bruno Walter in his farewell concert with the New York Philharmonic (released a few years back by Music & Arts) and in February '58 in his recording for Columbia.

The approval of Mahler's former protege Walter, combined with the rich maturity of her vocal tone, brought more Mahler work, including classic RCA Living Stereo recordings of Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) and Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1958 and Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1959 and many more “Resurrection” recordings – even thirty years later, when “Resurrection” aficionado Gilbert Kaplan made his first recording of his favorite piece, Forrester got the call.

She also racked up a bunch more Beethoven (beloved Ninths with Ferenc Fricsay on Deutsche Grammophon and Munch on RCA) and a lot of Baroque and Classical period pieces, especially Bach and Handel (for Vanguard) back when they weren't so commonly heard. She was typecast as not an opera singer, but in her forties she embarked on an opera career as well, and made her La Scala debut the year she turned 60! There was a considerable amount of teaching and arts administration in her career as well, and boosting of fellow Canadian artists and composers, until illness forced her to withdraw from public life.

Guitarist Garry Shider didn't always wear a diaper onstage as a member of Parliament, Funkadelic, and the P-Funk All Stars, well into his fifties, but it sure was what a lot of people remember him for. He was much more than that image might suggest, though, a crucial and talented figure in the George Clinton orbit whose high lead vocal on "Cosmic Slop" is one of the most soul-shatteringly empathetic creations of the era. For many years he was the music director of the P-Funk All Stars, equally adept at lead and rhythm guitar and a regular songwriting contributor who co-wrote "One Nation Under a Groove."

Born in Plainfield, NJ, Shider showed his musical talents early on in a family band that backed many famous gospel singers. It was in Plainfield that he first met Clinton at the latter's barber shop. After Shider and pal Cordell "Boogie" Mosson had relocated to Canada and formed the band United Soul, Clinton reconnected with them in 1971 and produced a bunch of tracks, with the single "I Owe You Something Good"/"I Miss My Baby" released on Westbound at that time (all the tracks were retrospectively released by Westbound last year); then Clinton recruited Shider and Mosson into his own bands, where Shider became the ongoing character of Starchild. Shider also find time to work on soundtracks and contribute to albums by the Black Crowes and Paul Shaffer.

It was announced earlier this year that Shider had cancer (lungs and brain), and a website was set up to collect donations towards his medical expenses and coordinate/announce benefit concerts. The proceeds of those concerts – notably two in the tri-state area, Saturday, July 10 at The Multi Media Arts Center, Bloomfield, NJ, including Living Colour, Bernie Worrell (P-Funk, Talking Heads), Miss Lady Kier (Deee-Lite), FUNK-KIN (comprised of Shider's brothers & cousins), Bernard Fowler (Rolling Stones, Tackhead), Blackbyrd McKnight, Melvin Gibbs (SociaLybrium, Harriet Tubman, Rollins Band), Ronny Drayton, special guests TBA, and "an all-star P-Funk jam powered by the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra," and Sunday, July 11 at B.B. King's on 42nd St. in Manhattan with Living Colour, Worrell, Kier, Fowler, Gibbs, Drayton, Militia, Jimmy Hazel (24-7 Spyz), and more – will now go to Shider's family to pay for medical and funeral expenses. - Steve Holtje

Mr. Holtje is a Brooklyn-based poet and composer who splits his time between editing Culturecatch.com, working at the Williamsburg record store Sound Fix, and editing cognitive neuroscience books for Oxford University Press. No prizes for guessing which pays best.