Macero, Teo [Attilio Joseph] (Glens Falls, NY, 30 Oct 1925)
Tenor saxophonist, composer, and record producer
After leaving the navy he moved in 1948 to New
York, where he entered the Juilliard
School. In 1953 he graduated
(Bachelor of Science and Master of Science) and became a founding member of
Charles Mingus's Jazz Composers' Workshop. Playing
tenor and baritone saxophones he recorded with Mingus
(1953-5) and performed with him at the Newport Jazz Festival (1956). Around
this time he also recorded three albums as a leader (1953, 1955, 1957) and worked with the Teddy Charles Tentette
(1956). With Mingus, Charles, and Gunther
Schuller, he became interested in fusing elements of
classical music and jazz; the resulting compositional style came to be known as
third stream. In the late 1950s Macero wrote several
atonal classical works that showed the influence of jazz. He joined Columbia
in 1957 as a music editor, and was soon the company's leading producer of jazz
recordings. After producing Miles Davis's album Kind of Blue in 1959, he went
on to work in this capacity on many outstanding sessions of the 1960s and
1970s. He was responsible for signing Mingus to Columbia,
and also supervised recordings by Thelonious Monk,
Dave Brubeck, and others. He left Columbia
in 1975 and became president of his own company, Teo
Productions, but continued to serve as Davis's
producer until 1983. In the late 1960s Davis
began to rely heavily on tape editing in the studio as part of the production
process; Macero's contribution thus became as
important as that of a sideman. Macero is the
composer of more than a thousand pieces, many of which are oriented towards
jazz; among them are film and ballet scores and music for television. He has
also written several arrangements of jazz standards, notably Blues for Amy and St.
Louis Blues (both on the album Something New,
Something Blue, 1959, Columbia CS8183). In the 1980s he resumed playing
saxophone; his style on this instrument is reminiscent of Lester Young's. In
1983 he directed and produced an album of his own compositions for big band,
Impressions of Charles Mingus.
Mark Gardner
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, © Macmillan Reference Ltd
1988