Obituary, Keith Tippett (1947-2020)

The jazz pianist and composer Keith Tippett, who cut an imposing figure in British musical life, passed away this week aged 72. One of the UK’s most widely respected improvisers and band leaders, Tippett first came to prominence as part of the jazz-rock fusion movement of the early 1970s. Instantly recognisable thanks to his trademark porkchop sideburns and tweed jackets, Tippett ploughed a highly individual path through the ensuing decades.

Born outside Bristol in Southmead to an English policeman father and Irish mother, Tippett was the eldest of three brothers. Showing early promise on piano, church organ, cornet and tenor horn, he formed his first band at fourteen - a trad jazz group, inspired by hearing Kenny Ball on the radio - and shortly after was making a name for himself on the Bristol jazz circuit. Inspired by the music of artists like Miles Davis and Charles Mingus, Tippett decided to pursue a career in music in London in 1967. He was soon playing with future stalwarts of the British jazz-fusion scene Elton Dean and Nick Evans, whom he had met on a summer-school jazz course. By 1970 he had formed the Keith Tippett Sextet and released his first album You are there, I am Here, and had also met his lifelong spiritual and musical partner, Julie Driscoll, a singer who had already seen early chart success in the UK with her version of ‘This Wheel’s On Fire’.

Tippett contributed to three King Crimson albums In the Wake of Poseidon, Lizard and Islands, although he declined Robert Fripp’s invitation to join the band officially, before forming his own 50-piece band Centipede with his now-wife Julie, alongside the cream of the UK’s thriving fusion scene. Releasing just one double album before the logistics of maintaining such an enterprise spelled the end, his next project was far more modest in scale, formed around Julie Tippett, Roy Babbington on bass and drummer Frank Perry, and released the album Blueprint.

Tippett will perhaps be best remembered as an awe-inspiring solo performer, and unlike many on the free-improv scene his improvisations were never constrained by the dogma of the day. On a good night his flights of fancy could touch upon the entire history of jazz, twentieth-century classical and blues, and switch from heart-on-sleeve romanticism to torrential cluster chords in the blink of eye, leaving audiences enraptured.

Despite suffering a heart attack in 2018, which led to pneumonia and frequent periods of hospitalisation, Tippett was back on stage in early 2019. He is survived by his wife Julie, their children, Inca and Luke, and his brothers, Clive and Thomas.