Obituary
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Aaron Bridgers
Kevin Henriques
Monday December 22, 2003
The Guardian
The pianist and composer Aaron Bridgers, who has died aged 85, was one of the last remaining links with the sophisticated, elegant musical world of Duke Ellington and his collaborator Billy Strayhorn.
Shortly after meeting Ellington in his home town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1939, Bridgers met Strayhorn in New York - "We became close right away," he recalled. Finding much in common, including a love of all things French - they both spoke the language and followed French classical composers - they soon began a relationship, and moved in together in New York.
The arrangement ended nine years later, when Bridgers left for Paris in 1948 on his first professional engagement: until then, he had earned his living outside music. Though he had studied classical piano, it was not until he heard Art Tatum that he decided to change direction, eventually becoming a pupil of the virtuoso jazz pianist.
Once in Paris, Bridgers began a long sojourn playing in fashionable bars and musicians' haunts, such as the Ringside, Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit, the Living Room and the Mars Club, where he was one of many black American artists who found the atmosphere more congenial than at home. He performed on radio and television, played in Copenhagen, Venice and Capri, and appeared in a handful of films, notably Paris Blues (1961), for which Ellington and Strayhorn wrote the score. Whenever Strayhorn visited Paris, he gravitated towards Bridgers, who became a French citizen in 1974.
As musical tastes changed, outlets for Bridgers's work diminished, however, and he retired in 1995. Today, examples of his style are scarce. He made his last recording in 1999, as one of 11 pianists on the tribute CD, Elllington Moods. His piece was dedicated to Strayhorn and commemorated a philodendron he once gave him.
Bridgers' autobiography, Piano In The Background, did not find a publisher, because, he said, they wanted a more sensational approach. But that was not in the nature of this urbane, unmalicious, gentle man.
· Aaron Bridgers, pianist and composer, born January 10 1918; died November 3 2003
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