Avant-garde composer and musician who was associated with the free jazz movement and played the trumpet, piano, and flugelhorn.
He studied visual art at Boston University and the Art Students League and later attended the Hartnette Conservatory of Music.
He taught in the Music Department at Bennington College in Vermont for nearly thirty years.
He and his family moved from Nantucket, Massachusetts, to Harlem when he was seven years old.
He collaborated with Cecil Taylor on Taylor's 1966 jazz album Conquistador!