Wir wurden leider von seinem Management informiert, dass Henry Butler am Morgen des 2. Juli verstarb. May he rest in peace! We are all very sad about this great loss! CH

Henry Charles Butler, 69, transitioned at 8:20 a.m. on July 2, 2018. Metastasized colon cancer precipitated the event. A musician with deep roots and mastery of music that spanned classical and German lieder to Tibetan folk songs, blues, R&B, trad and experimental jazz, and much more, Butler’s influence in shaping the future of music, well beyond its obvious sources, will continue to resonate in many corners.

Blinded by glaucoma at birth, Butler has been playing the piano since he was six years old, and arranging, composing, and performing professionally since he was twelve. The son of Natlea Bell and George Butler, he was born in New Orleans September 21, 1948, and grew up in the Calliope Projects. He learned to play a variety of instruments at the Louisiana School for the Blind. He later studied under clarinetist Alvin Batiste at Southern University, where he majored in voice and minored in piano. He went on to earn a master’s degree in vocal music from Michigan State University in 1974. He taught at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, a specialized high-school program with illustrious alumni, and at Eastern Illinois University.

“If I had to just play a blues as a blues, play jazz just like jazz, maybe I'd do something else for a living,” Butler told Larry Blumenfeld for a Wall Street Journal profile. Describing his feelings about performing New Orleans standard repertoire, such as “Basin Street Blues,” he told Blumenfeld (for the liner notes to his PiaNOLA Live album): “I used to practice tunes like that but I wouldn’t play them in public. I thought it was tourist music. Yet playing them day after day opened me up. It’s only tourist music if you play it like tourist music.”

In a New York Times review of a performance at New York City’s Jazz Standard, critic Nate Chinen described Butler as “percussive in his attack, ostentatious with his technique…the picture of stubborn mischief — and, not coincidentally, of New Orleans pianism. He obliged the spirit of the occasion with his own stylistic consommé: billowing whole-tone glissandi; furrowed, Monkish hiccups; boppish two-handed octaves; flare-ups of funk and Chopin.”

Butler has played almost every major club and festival in the United States, as well as venues in Brazil, France, Norway, Italy, Japan, Australia, China and more. For over forty years, he has conducted workshops, clinics, and master classes throughout the country; he also developed a camp for blind and visually impaired teen musicians, the subject of the documentary The Music’s Gonna Get You Through. Butler’s photographs exploring the sighted world’s relationship with the flat representational image and its power continue to be exhibited nationally and internationally. He and his photographic work were featured in the documentary Dark Light: The Art of Blind Photographers, and his work is included in the exhibition Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists, still on tour.

The most recent of his many CDs is Viper’s Drag (with Butler, Bernstein & The Hot 9) on Impulse!, which is a large-ensemble collaboration with trumpeter and arranger Steven Bernstein. It followed PiaNOLA Live, with works pulled from the rich personal archives that were nearly all that survived Hurricane Katrina, which decimated his home and took his piano, his Braille scores, and all his recording equipment.

His debut album was the 1986 Fivin’ Around, with stellar jazz musicians. Among his many other recordings are Orleans Inspiration, with hometown funk heroes, including guitarist Leo Nocentelli, and Vu-Du Menz, with bluesman Corey Harris.

A fierce negotiator, Henry was also a kind and supportive guide, committed to exploration and discovery and building a world of peace, laughter, and joy where all could accept the “other” in each of us. His last tour, in May 2018 to China and Australia, was with his beloved Jambalaya Band—Bobby Bryan, Fred Cash, and Adrian Harpham—each one, according to Henry, “brilliant at his core.”

He is survived by his longtime partner, Annaliese Jakimides, and a brother, George Butler, Jr.

(...) Das tat anderntags beim letzten, zu Recht umjubelten Konzert die „Hot 9“ von Henry Butler und Steven Bernstein. Ihr Programm „Viper's Drag“ schien zu sagen: Wenn schon retro, wie es offenbar unvermeidlich im heutigen Jazz ist, dann gleich „all the way back“. Nach New Orleans, zu den Wurzeln. In eine selige Vergangenheit also, die es natürlich nie so gegeben hat, wie Butler und Bernstein sie nachempfinden. Man kann nicht so tun, als ob Swing, Bebop, Freejazz etc. nicht passiert wären. Das wissen sie, das unterscheidet ihre Beschwörung des Ahnengeists von klassizistischen Projekten wie jenen von Wynton Marsalis. „Die meisten Leute glauben, dass Jelly Roll Morton dieses Stück geschrieben hat“, sagte Butler vor dem „Buddy Bolden's Blues“, „aber die Wahrheit ist: Ich habe es getan, damals, im Jahr 1902.“ Will sagen: Man kann die Tradition nicht hüten, man kann sie nur neu erfinden, hier und jetzt. (...) (Thomas Kramar, 2016)
Last-Minute-Engagement einer New Orleans Legende, die beim Jazzfest Saalfelden für den umjubelnden Abschluss der Ausgabe 2016 sorgte und der nun mit seiner sehr blueslastigen Jambalaya Band (meines Wissens) zum ersten Mal Österreich besucht. Welcome tot he Club! CH

Blinded by glaucoma at birth, Butler has been playing the piano since he was six years old, and arranging, composing, and performing professionally since he was twelve.

A New York Times review of a performance at New York City's Jazz Standard described Butler as "percussive in his attack, ostentatious with his technique---the picture of stubborn mischief — and, not coincidentally, of New Orleans pianism. He obliged the spirit of the occasion with his own stylistic consommé: billowing whole-tone glissandi; furrowed, Monkish hiccups; boppish two-handed octaves; flare-ups of funk and Chopin."

Butler's sound has been influenced by the streets (he grew up in the Calliope Projects in New Orleans, has traveled the world, lived on both coasts and in the heartland); by studying with the greats (Alvin Batiste, Sir Roland Hanna, Professor Longhair, and James Booker, among others); by institutions (Louisiana School for the Blind, Southern University, Baton Rouge, and Michigan State University); and by his willingness to explore new boundaries and to take risks.

To date, Butler has played almost every major club and festival in the United States, as well as venues in Brazil, France, Norway, Italy, Japan, Australia, and more. For over forty years, he has conducted workshops, clinics, and master classes throughout the country; he also developed a camp for blind and visually impaired teen musicians, the subject of a 2010 documentary, The Music's Gonna Get You Through.

Butler's photographs exploring the sighted world's relationship with the flat representational image and its power continue to be exhibited nationally and internationally and appear in major newspapers across the country. He and his photographic work were featured in the recent HBO documentary Dark Light: the Art of Blind Photographers, and his work is included in the exhibition Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists, still on tour.

The most recent of his many CDs is Viper’s Drag (with Butler, Bernstein & The Hot 9) on Impulse! It followsPiaNOLA Live, with works pulled from his rich archives, about all that survived Hurricane Katrina, which decimated his home and took his piano, Braille scores, and all his recording equipment. Butler can also be heard on recordings by other musicians, including Cyndi Lauper, Jeff Golub, and Odetta, and on the 2012 release of Treme, Season 2: Music from the Original HBO Series.

Whether it’s as a soloist or with his blues groups (Henry Butler and the Game Band, and Henry Butler and Jambalaya), his traditional jazz band (Papa Henry and the Steamin’ Syncopators), or the “vampy, bouncy, playful, and saucy” Butler, Bernstein & The Hot 9, you’re in for the ride of a lifetime.