Orrin Keepnews, Jazz Producer and Record Executive, Is Dead at 91

Orrin Keepnews, who as a record company executive and producer helped create some of the most celebrated recordings in jazz over a half-century, died on Sunday at his home in El Cerrito, Calif. He was 91.

His death was confirmed by his son Peter.

Mr. Keepnews, a four-time Grammy Award winner, was a jazz journalist, essayist and writer of album notes as well as the producer of enduring albums by the likes of the tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins and the pianists Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans.

In 1987 his collection “The View From Within: Jazz Writings, 1948-87” was published by Oxford University Press. It included jazz criticism as well as a memorably cantankerous takedown of the field. “After all these years,” he wrote, “I find myself unable to avoid an unhappy conclusion: Jazz criticism is a bad idea, poorly executed.”

Nestled within the same essay was one of his clearest descriptions of the record producer’s responsibility. “Our job,” he wrote, “is to create what is best described as ‘realism’ — the impression and effect of being real — which may be very different from plain unadorned reality.”

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The New York Times