On Tuesday, May 19, roughly 500 members of the jazz community came together in Saint Peter’s Church in NYC to celebrate the life and music of the renowned clarinetist and saxophonist Ken Peplowski, who died earlier this year on Feb. 2, the last day of The Jazz Cruise.
Saint Peter’s is renowned as the “jazz church, where many jazz greats including Miles Davis, Sheila Jordan and Roy Haynes have been feted in memorial services in the past.
This event featured a mix of remembrances and performances. Among the latter were Catherine Russell, John Pizzarelli, Frank Vignola, Vinny Raniolo, Tierney Sutton, Shelly Berg, Ted Rosenthal, Rossano Sportiello and Katie Thiroux. Interspersed between the performances, Paquito D’Rivera, Spike Wilner, Loren Schoenberg and others offered short personal remembrances of their friend, with a common theme being how Ken took the music seriously, but not himself (or others) seriously.
WBGO’s contributing photographer Steven Sussman was there to capture moments from this memorial service. View a slideshow of their photos from the event above.
You can watch the livestream of the entire event on the Saint Peter’s Church YouTube channel here.
