Musician’s career included both big bands and minimalist trios

Jimmy Giuffre, the saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger and composer whose work encompassed a range including big band scoring, cool West Coast jazz, minimalist trios and free improvisation, died Thursday in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 86.

The cause of death, according to his wife, Juanita, was pneumonia, a complication of his lengthy battle with Parkinson’s disease.

Giuffre’s 1947 composition, “Four Brothers,” which featured a saxophone section consisting of the then-unusual combination of three tenor saxophones and a baritone saxophone, created the signature sound of the Woody Herman band and established his visibility as one of the important figures on the then-emerging West Coast jazz scene.

Although he was initially known in the early ‘50s as a tenor saxophonist who occasionally doubled on baritone saxophone with the Lighthouse All-Stars and Shorty Rogers’ Giants, it was Giuffre’s mid-decade clarinet playing that attracted the greatest attention. Concentrating on its warm-toned chalumeau register, some critics complained that he declined to explore the full span of the instrument. But the style, with its intimate timbre and Lester Young-inspired phrasing, was well-suited for the folk-jazz qualities of the Giuffre trio, which was featured in the 1957 television special “The Sound of Jazz,” playing “The Train and the River.”

Looking back, Giuffre told the Boston Herald in 1992, “I got tired of loudness. I never got to hear my sound. Or anyone else’s sound.”

That trio, and others that followed, served as important vehicles for Giuffre’s ever-probing musical imagination. In search of a rhythmic and metric flexibility that was difficult to obtain in the pulse-driven rhythm teams of the ‘50s, his first trio omitted the drums, combining his clarinet with the guitar of Jim Hall and the bass of Ralph Pena. In the best-known expression of that particular trio concept, Pena’s bass was replaced by the valve trombone playing of Bob Brookmeyer, further enhancing the contrapuntal qualities that were essential elements in Giuffre’s musical perspective.

In 1961, stimulated by the dynamic approaches to improvisation advanced by Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and others, Giuffre organized a new trio with pianist Paul Bley and bassist Steve Swallow. Making liberal use of floating rhythms, free improvisation and unusual timbral effects, fully responsive to the presence of aleatoric and chance improvisational techniques in the concert music of the time, the Giuffre trio’s early ‘60s recordings -- “1961” and “Free Fall” -- explored a jazz territory unlimited by any of the traditional boundaries.

“My goals -- complete freedom and expressiveness -- put great stress on each player,” Giuffre told Down Beat magazine. “We have to listen very closely to each other, much more so than in other types of units.”

Although groups led by Coleman, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and others received greater recognition at the time, the Giuffre-Bley-Swallow combination can be seen, in retrospect, as one of the vital transitional units of the ‘60s.

Giuffre, Bley and Swallow got back together in 1990 to record the highly praised double album “Life of a Trio,” nearly three decades after they had last played together.

Other versions of the trio followed, including a mid-’60s incarnation that included pianist Don Friedman and bassist Barre Phillips that appears to have produced no recordings. Giuffre was also busy as a composer, writing works for classical ensembles, and teaming up with dancer Jean Erdman to compose and perform in a work titled “The Castle.”

He took a decade-long hiatus from recording after the release of “Free Fall” in 1962, but led several ensembles in the ‘70s and ‘80s, sometimes reaching back to his bebop roots, sometimes revisiting the trio format (in one case adding world music elements to the mix). And he provided music for “Sighet, Sighet,” an Elie Wiesel documentary and “Smiles,” a short film by John Avildsen.

Giuffre had a parallel teaching career from the late ‘50s, when he joined musicians such as John Lewis, George Russell, Dizzy Gillespie, Gunther Schuller and others on the staff of the annual summer sessions of the School of Jazz in Lenox, Mass. He then taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey, New York University and began a lengthy stint at the New England Conservatory in 1978.

Giuffre’s last appearance in Los Angeles in 1994 -- a duet set with Bley -- was a courageous effort, but he was clearly impacted by the effects of Parkinson’s disease. He made few public playing appearances after that time.

Born April 26, 1921, in Dallas, he attended North Texas State Teacher’s College, graduating in 1942 with a bachelor of music degree. He also studied composition with Wesley LaViolette. After serving four years in the army, he played with the Herman band, as well as the Boyd Raeburn, Jimmy Dorsey and Buddy Rich ensembles. Giuffre lived in Los Angeles and New York in the ‘50s and ‘60s before settling down in the late ‘70s in a converted New England stone-polishing mill.

His wife, whom he married in 1961, is his sole survivor.