In Memory of a Rising Voice Now Silenced

Singer Teri Thornton’s remarkable, star-crossed life came to an end last week, when shedied at 65 from the complications of bladder cancer.

A spectacular success in the early ‘60s, she was widely viewed as one of the next great jazz vocalists, a likely successor to the lineage that reached through Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae. But time and circumstance were not in her favor. She arrived on the scene in the decade in which the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and rock music took over popular music, when jazz was distracted by the avant-garde sounds of the ‘60s. Nor was her career abetted by her then-dependence upon alcohol.

For the latter part of the decade and most of the ‘70s, Thornton was living in Los Angeles, raising a family and performing mostly in small local clubs.

“But she never complained about what had happened to her career,” says singer Sandy Graham, a close friend. “That wasn’t in her. She was working in piano bars and hotels, but she was never bitter. And she was always fun to be around, you know, just girlfriend to girlfriend.”

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According to Graham, who included two Thornton originals on her own first album, “Sandy Graham” (Muse), “she lived all over the place, sometimes in the Valley, sometimes in L.A., raising her kids as a single parent, and doing it on what she made working in places like Donte’s, the Money Tree, Carmelo’s and lots of hotels. Since she was a singer who also played piano, she could almost always get a gig at a hotel.”

In 1986, Thornton moved to New York, essentially supporting herself in similar venues as those in L.A. But a meeting with manager and producer Suzi Reynolds in 1995 at Manhattan’s Blue Note Club triggered a major shift in fortune. With Reynolds’ support, a recording was begun, tours were planned and--eventually--she was entered into the 1998 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Winning first prize with a much praised performance, she signed with Verve Records, and her first album was released in 1999.

What seemed to be a story too good to be true, however, was indeed a tale with a dark side. Early in 1998, Thornton was diagnosed with bladder cancer. And her entry material for the Monk competition was sent by Reynolds at a time when Thornton was undergoing radiation treatment and chemotherapy. Yet, amazingly, she came through it well enough to deliver her prizewinning performance.

At that point, with her cancer apparently in remission, all systems appeared to be go for a Thornton revival. At 63, she was still young enough to look forward to years of musical productivity. And the rave reviews she was receiving from the press and her musical contemporaries confirmed that the Monk prize was no fluke, that her creativity had survived intact through the years of obscurity.

But the dark side never quite dissipated. Although she performed in various venues throughout 1999 and into 2000, it was always with considerable difficulty. During a trip to Europe, she was stricken with severe physical symptoms that suggested her cancer had returned.

“She could hardly get out of bed during the day,” says Reynolds, who was producer, manager, friend and sometimes nurse for Thornton in the final years. “Yet she showed up for every performance and sang her heart out.”

Earlier this year, in an appearance at the Village Vanguard, she was cheered by audiences that included everyone from Clint Eastwood and Bill Cosby to Herbie Hancock and Wynton Marsalis. Yet, even here, each performance was a test of will and endurance.

“We had to almost literally carry her down the back stairs to her dressing room,” Reynolds says. “I told her she didn’t have to go on, that she didn’t have to do the performance. But there was no arguing with Teri. And when she got up on stage, she came alive. I’ve never seen the kind of reaction she got from those audiences.”

Thornton was scheduled to be one of the headliners (with trumpeter Terence Blanchard) at the Jazz Bakery’s “Jazz on a June Night” on June 3 at the John Anson Ford Theater. Although she was receiving chemotherapy in the period after the Vanguard appearance, she had shown such resilient capacity for recovery in the past that Reynolds and Thornton continued to believe she would somehow make the date. But it wasn’t to be.

“At one point she told me that ‘They’ve already come for me three times,’ ” Reynolds recalls. “I asked what she was talking about. And she said, ‘You know, from the other side. But I told them I wasn’t ready to go yet.’

“And you know, it’s strange how much that reminds me of a part of the lyric from her song ‘Knee Deep in the Blues.’ It goes, ‘I thought I saw death standing in my doorway, and I said, ‘Stop, I ain’t goin’ right now.’ ”

But it may have been Thornton’s son Kelly who had the most telling comment about his mother’s passing on May 2. Informed that she had died at 10 minutes before 9 p.m., he noted, “That’s just like her. Ten minutes before show time and she’s ready to go out and sing.”

Thornton will be replaced on the Jazz Bakery’s Ford Theater performance by singers Nnenna Freelon and Carmen Lundy. Although she did not make another studio album before she died, her Village Vanguard performances apparently were recorded. One hopes that Verve will find enough material in the tapes to produce an appropriate epilogue for a musical life that ended far too soon.

Jazz Education 101: The Juilliard School is collaborating with Jazz at Lincoln Center to create the revered music institution’s first jazz program.

The Jazz Studies program begins in September 2001, when 18 to 20 primarily post-college instrumentalists will become members of the initial class. The one- to two-year program will be tuition-free and comparable to similar elite professional programs in drama and opera.

Initial admissions will reflect the desire to create a Juilliard Jazz Orchestra, with an instrumentation goal of five reeds players, four trumpeters, three trombonists, two pianists, two bassists, two drummers and one guitarist.

Auditions will be held in New York and at regional locations during the coming academic year.

The program’s director of jazz studies will be saxophonist Vincent Goines, who has been an education consultant for Jazz at Lincoln Center since 1998 and a member of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

“The Juilliard Jazz ensemble,” says Goines, “will perform concerts in and around the Greater New York area, but it will also perform on tours arranged by Jazz at Lincoln Center. The curriculum is intended to focus on the highest level of musical performance. And it is all located in the heart of New York. . . . I think that these benefits will attract some of the finest students available.”

For information, contact the Juilliard School at (212) 799-5000.