Misha Mengelberg obituary

One of the most creative jazz pianists to emerge in the first phase of Europe’s breakaway from American styles in the 1960sIn his last years the Dutch pianist, composer and improviser Misha Mengelberg, who has died aged 81, would sometimes whistle and sing in conversation with visiting friends when advancing Alzheimer’s disease made words particularly elusive. But conversing this way was perhaps not as big an inconvenience for Mengelberg as it might have been for some, since much of