American jazz trumpeter
Born June 3, 1935 in Philadelphia, PA
Died November 4, 2012 in Montclair, NJ.
Worked mainly in the post-bop and free jazz idioms. After studies at the Granoff School of Music in Philadelphia, and performing with Charlie Ventura in 1953, he settled in New York in 1956. On his first recording, he performed with Cecil Taylor (Love for Sale, 1959), in a group which also featured Bill Barron, later a regular colleague during 1962-66. With Charles Mingus in 1960, the bassist's group featured Eric Dolphy, the dedicatee of a Curson compositions forming the title track of the Tears for Dolphy album recorded shortly after he died. In Europe from the mid-1960s and based in Denmark (he later returned to the US), Curson performed with the Polish pianist Andrzej Trzaskowski for about two years, and on the soundtrack of the Pier Paolo Pasolini motion picture Teorema (1968) reportedly writing some of the music, though Ennio Morricone received the sole credit. From 1966, he performed annually at the Pori Jazz festival in Finland, forming a bond with the country. At the request of its president. Tarja Halonen, he performed at Finland's Independence Day Ball in 2007.