Jon Hassell, RIP

My favourite trumpet player - a distinction without competition - died yesterday, at the age of 84. 

Jon Hassell was a musician and composer best known for his "fourth world" music, which has managed to bypass the now-ubiquitous charges of 'cultural appropriation' through sheer rigour and respect. In an essay titled The Debt I Owe To Jon Hassell, Brian Eno wrote “If I had to name one over-riding principle in Jon’s work, it would be that of respect: he looks at the world in all its momentary and evanescent moods with respect, and this shows in his music.”

Hassell himself decried what he called “the banalisation of the exotic … the herd trampling through the campsites where I delicately and respectfully visited 15 or 20 years ago”.

He was born in Memphis and studied in Germany under Karlheinz Stockhausen, alongside classmates Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay, who went on to found the band CAN. He recently described to Billboard magazine an experience taking acid at Schmidt’s house: “I remember being on the floor listening to gagaku Japanese music and watching the fibres of the rug sway with the music.”

When he returned to the USA, he met Terry Riley and performed on his signature work, In C. He later worked with another influential minimalist composer, La Monte Young, joining the Theatre of Eternal Music and studying under Young's mentor Pandit Pran Nath. Nath was an Indian classical singer and master of the Kirana gharana singing style, a process dedicated to just intonation. Hassell applied these vocal techniques to the trumpet. 

Hassell’s debut album Vernal Equinox was released in 1978 and was followed by a collaboration with Eno two years later, Possible Musics/Fourth World, Vol. 1. The recording was was named one of the year's ten best recordings by The New York Times and the Village Voice. 

He subsequently collaborated with a wide range of performers, including Ibrahim Ferrer, Stina Nordenstam (an under-rated Swedish singer whose work I discovered when Hassell played on her excellent second album And She Closed her Eyes), David Toop, Bjork, Flea, Howie B, former classmate Holger Czukay, the Kronos Quartet, artist Walter De Maria, Michael Brook, Daniel Lanois, the Talking Heads, and countless others.

He was initially a third collaborator on Brian Eno and David Byrne's influential album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, but quit the project early on, disappointed with the results of the early demos. He remained estranged from Byrne, though later became close again with Eno, who started a GoFundMe page for Hassell in April 2020, to help raise money when the composer's health first began to deteriorate. Over a hundred thousand dollars were raised. 

“After a little more than a year of fighting through health complications, Jon died peacefully in the early morning hours of natural causes,” his family wrote in the statement. “He cherished life and leaving this world was a struggle as there was much more he wished to share in music, philosophy, and writing.” 

His fans included filmmakers (Wim Wenders, Chris Marker), visual artists (Jean-Michel Basquiat), composers (Philip Glass: "I recommend all the works of Jon Hassell"), pop stars (Charlie Watts, Pete Townsend, Bono, Ani Di Franco), electronic musicians (808 State, Scanner, Howie B) and other performers.  

Ry Cooder called him "One of the three or four players of wind instruments in the world who can command your attention with one note". Brian Eno described his frequent collaborator as someone who "planted seeds whose fruits are still being gathered”. 

David Bryne, Brian Eno and (an already pulling away?) Jon Hassell