Pitchfork

Legendary jazz producer and player Teo Macero-- best known for his work with Miles Davis during his incredibly fertile jazz-rock fusion period of the late 1960s and early 70s-- died Tuesday, February 19 according to The New York Times. He was 82.

Macero, born in Glens Falls, New York, studied at the Julliard School of Music before becoming involved with Columbia Records in 1957. In his nearly 20 years with Columbia, Macero was a pioneering figure in the way jazz was released on record. His early work with the label yielded such classics as Davis' Kind of Blue, Dave Brubeck's Time Out and Charles Mingus' Mingus Ah Um, lending the proceedings a warm, natural sound.

But it was his involvement with Miles Davis' experiments with rock music beginning in the late 60s that truly defined Macero as a producer. Not content to simply let Miles and company's gloriously unruly sessions be released in their unedited form, Macero laboriously edited Davis' raw improvisations to create the finished product. He believed that the studio albums themselves were as vital as the performances on those works.

Macero's touch-- and deftness with a razorblade, then the best way to splice together audio tape-- can be felt on such landmark LPs as In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. According to the New York Times, Macero was not involved in Columbia's reissue series of Miles Davis' sessions from that era in largely unedited box sets, as he saw the proper LPs as the only true "finished versions" of the work.

In addition to his role behind the boards, Macero was an accomplished composer and saxophonist, playing in Mingus' band and recording LPs under his own name. As a performer, he was also involved in the proliferation of the jazz/classical hybrid Third Stream in the 1950s. Macero also worked as a producer on Broadway cast recordings and film soundtracks, and, after leaving Columbia in 1975, went on to work with a diverse crew of artists like Robert Palmer and Vernon Reid.