New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Jazz trombonist, composer, conductor dies at 90
Alan Raph of Candlewood Lake, who died Dec. 8 at the age of 90, was, according to his friends and family, a musician’s musician.
“Alan was, in terms of the bass trombone and myself and countless other players in New York City, he gave us our careers,” said longtime friend Jack Schatz. “He gave us our first recording days, our first Broadway shows, our first film dates, he recommended us.”
Schatz said Raph “never looked down on someone who’s young, who was a good player, as a new kid on the block.”
“He would always look at that person as a peer,” Schatz said. “On the same hand, he was a consummate musician, phenomenal trombone player, an accomplished organist and pianist, arranger, composer and music editor.”
Raph’s wife of 45 years, Mary Ann Raph, said he loved to canoe on the lake and play tennis. He was, she said, known for his wit. “He was incredibly fast with funny quips and truly unique answers with so much humor. He also was into carpentry, after a fashion, and made our dining room table.”
But Raph was, perhaps first and foremost, a musician. He learned to scuba dive, but he learned while on tour.
“We went to Guadeloupe. We went there with Gerry Mulligan,” Mary Ann Raph said. They also went together to Bermuda with Frankie Avalon. “We were there for, the longest period was eight weeks. We thought we’d lose our minds. You know, there’s just so much sun and surf and beach and tennis and what have you that you can take but he finally said to me, ‘Mary Ann, let’s let’s look into certified diving.’”
A New York City native, Raph attended New York University where he was a classically trained brass player, specializing in the trombone and tuba. He got his start playing for Les Elegart, whose orchestra played dance band music.
Then, when Gerry Mulligan was looking for a bass trombone player for his jazz ensemble, his first choice was not available, so Raph was recommended for the job.
“Alan called Gerry Mulligan and Gerry said to him, ‘Are you good?’ And Alan just said, ‘I’m quick,’” Schatz recalled. “And he became a charter member of Gerry Mulligan’s concert jazz ensemble.”
Mary Ann met Raph when she was a master’s student at Columbia University.
“There was one course that I had to take, which was band instruments, which I hadn’t taken yet to get my master’s, and Alan was the person giving that course,” she said. “It took us probably two or three weeks to actually get together, because he had record dates and everything. There was always something that was interfering. When it finally came to my meeting him it was just me. I was the only student that really needed that particular course at that time. And it just took off from there.”
Raph also wrote and edited books on music. A few of them, like “Les Brass”
and “L’ Orchestra,” were humorous takes on music and musicianship. He was, Mary Ann Raph said, a voracious reader. For a time, the couple were living in Connecticut while Raph was working as a commercial recording artist in New York City, which meant hours of commuting each day. He spent the time listening to books on tape.
“At one point, he said to me, ‘I’ve done all the books,’” she recalled. “This was a few years after, he said, ‘I did every book that was in the New Fairfield library and every book in the Danbury library. I listened to them all.’”
The list of people Raph played with over the years includes some of the best known names in music history. In addition to Mulligan and Avalon, Raph played with the likes of Judy Garland, Tony Bennett, Burt Bacharach, Dionne Warwick, Frankie Avalon, Mel Torme, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn, Lena Horn, Buddy Morrow, Mel Davis, Bernie Glow, Urbie Green, Wynton Marsalis, Bill Watrous, Leopold Stokowski, Larry Elgart, Quincy Jones, Philip Glass, Peter Nero, John Pizzarelli and Bob Brookmeyer.
But it wasn’t about playing with big names, for Raph. It was about the music.
“He used to do cocktail piano up here,” Mary Ann Raph said. “He would go into the hotel and they needed a pianist, they’d call him and he’d do cocktails. He has tons of tunes in his mind. An unbelievable memory for tunes.”
Raph was active in music into his 90th year. Schatz said that “he was a guy who never really retired because when he actually stopped playing professionally, every day he got up and he wrote and he composed and he edited.”
“Alan was just full of life all the time,” Schatz said. “Every time I spoke to him, which was often, he
sounded like the first conversation we had 40 years ago.”
Raph was, when he died, rehearsing for a concert to be performed on Dec. 17 at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Danbury. He is survived by his wife, Mary Ann, sons, Robert and Jason, daughter, Diane, three grandchildren and sister, Ranney Moss.
This story is part of an ongoing series profiling the lives of Connecticut residents who have recently died. If you have a friend or family member you’d like to be considered for this series, email jordan.fenster@hearstmediact.com.