George Russell

Jazz composer, educator and musician whose theories led the way to radical changes in jazz in the 1950s and ’60s. George Russell was born in Cincinnati on June 23, 1923, and grew up in a foster home. His adoptive father was a chef on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and his adoptive mother was a nurse. He played drums with the Boy Scouts’ drum-and-bugle corps and attended Wilberforce University in Ohio on a scholarship. At Wilberforce he played with the Collegians, the university’s imposing jazz and dance band. In 1941, while hospitalized for tuberculosis, he learned the science of harmony from a fellow patient. At that time he composed “New World” for the saxophonist and bandleader Benny Carter. He later moved to New York to play drums with Carter’s band, but he gave up the instrument as soon as Max Roach was called in to replace him. “Max had it all on drums,” he said. “I decided that writing was my field.” In 1964 Mr. Russell, who as a black man was dismayed by race relations in the United States, moved to Scandinavia. He returned in 1969 and joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory, where he taught until 2004. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his son, Jock Millgardh, of Los Angeles, and three grandchildren.