Sal Mosca, a jazz pianist whose career began playing with
giants like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis,
The cause was
complications from emphysema, said his daughter, Kathryn Mosca.
Mr. Mosca was one of the main protigis
of Lennie Tristano, the
jazz pianist known for his rigorous approach to improvisation and his cult
following among students and fans. A lifelong resident of
In the 1950s he
played on several watershed early cool-jazz recordings, like "Ezz-thetic," with Miles Davis, and
Subconscious-Lee," with the saxophonist Lee Konitz,
another Tristano student with whom Mr. Mosca played in clubs like Birdland.
Mr. Tristano later wrote in the liner notes for Mr. Moscas
1977 album "Mosca Music" that "of all
the great people in jazz since the 1940s, Sal Mosca is one of the
greatest."
Mr. Mosca adopted Mr. Tristanos
curriculum of marathon practice sessions and studying the solos of a
small pantheon of jazz improvisers. He stuck to a select repertory of
standard songs, usually playing only extreme abstractions of the
original melodies or substituting complex melodic lines over a
songs original harmonic structure.
Mr. Mosca played on the bill with Lenny Bruce at the Den in
But after that he
largely avoided performing and recording, seeing it as a threat to the
integrity of his intense practicing, playing and teaching, he said in
interviews with The New York Times in recent years. He lived in a commercial
building he owned in downtown
After a series
of operations he grew depressed, he said, and in 1997 he stopped playing
altogether for four years, refusing to leave home or touch his Steinway concert grand,
even as recordings of his earlier performances were being released. Eventually
he returned to teaching, jam sessions and public performances. In January he
played five solo concerts in
In addition to
his daughter, his survivors include his sons Michael and Steven and seven
grandchildren.
Mr. Mosca credited his seclusion with giving deeper meaning to
his music.
I was only
away from music physically," he explained. "Even while I was away
from the piano, I was always playing in my mind, going over chord
changes."