Barry Harris, beloved jazz pianist devoted to bebop, dies at 91

Barry Harris, a pianist who carefully preserved the language of bebop throughout a seven-decade career as a brilliant performer and influential teacher, died Wednesday at Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, N.J. He was 91 and lived in Weehawken, N.J.

Harris had been hospitalized for the last two weeks and died of complications due to Covid, said Kira von Ostenfeld-Suske, who was part of a small support team of friends and students that helped Harris in recent years. Harris would have turned 92 next week and taught his last class, via Zoom, on Nov. 20.

One of the leading musicians to emerge from Detroit's modern jazz explosion in the 1940s and '50s, Harris remained indefatigable into his early 90s. He led weekly workshops in New York, appeared in clubs and concert halls and traveled the world to teach and spread the gospel of bebop