Peter Niklas Wilson (1957-2003)

Foto: Hans Kumpf (2003)

Our dear colleague, Peter Niklas Wilson, died over the weekend after a long fight with illness. Wilson was born in 1957 in Hamburg, studied musicology in Goettingen and Hamburg, achieved his PhD in 1984 and since then was one of the most profound publicist about jazz, New Music and the spheres between these two in Germany. In 1994 he became a professor of musicology, taught at Musikhochschule Hamburg and at the musicological department of Hamburg University, at the same time producing radio shows for German and Swiss radio stations, writing for the most important periodicals and playing the double bass. As a musician he worked with Anthony Braxton, John Tchicai, Malcolm Goldstein and many other musicians, was co-founder of a musicians' initiative in Hamburg and of a small record label producing contemporary improvised music. His books comprise standard studies about Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Anthony Braxton, Albert Ayler and Miles Davis, studies about contemporary music between jazz, improvised music and contemporary composed music. His books on Coleman and Rollins have also been available in English translations. Wilson was a regular guest at the Darmstadt Jazzforum, the biennial international conference on jazz research. He attended our last Jazzforum in September 2003 on "improvising..." giving a highly controversive paper about new paradigms in contemporary improvisation. He fought against his illness since more than a year, never giving up, always staying busy with the work and the music he cared for so much. We miss him as one of the most outspoken among German musicologists, an author with a highly entertaining, yet profound style, a careful analytical and critical mind and a beautiful, always reliable personality. We miss him as a dear colleague and as a good friend. We are sad about this loss, and will honour his memory.

Wolfram Knauer, October 28, 2003, JazzInstitut Darmstadt