Less than two weeks ago, the septuagenarians Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea were leaving the Barbican stage in London to a standing ovation for their free-spirited piano partnership, and the rich shared experiences that fuelled it. The show spurred reflections on how widespread the two Americans’ influence – and that of fellow citizens Keith Jarrett, McCoy Tyner and Brad Mehldau – has been on jazz piano methods over the past 40 years. But in the wake of the death of the much-loved British pianist John Taylor, following a heart attack onstage in Segré, north-west France, aged 72, a different thought surfaces.

The self-deprecating, whimsical and elegantly awe-inspiring Taylor could undoubtedly have sat in on Corea’s or Hancock’s stool on those Barbican shows, swapped impromptu thoughts as freely with either one, sensed impending movements in their harmonically roving narratives as fast, spun them back with as much fascination for the thinking of Bartók or Debussy as well as Bill Evans, maybe added a little of the Englishness of Holst for good measure – and he would have done it with the same generosity of spirit and open ears.

John Taylor playing How Deep Is the Ocean?

Taylor emerged as one of the most promising newcomers in the British jazz generation of the late 1960s that included the saxophonists John Surman and Alan Skidmore, the composers Mike Westbrook and Mike Gibbs, and the vocalist Norma Winstone. He quickly became close to established older artists including John Dankworth and Cleo Laine, and the trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. As one of the house pianists at Ronnie Scott’s in the 70s, backing star American guests, he inventively drew on the methods of Evans and Hancock. But it was his involvement as co-founder of the trio Azimuth (with Wheeler and Winstone) from 1977 that nurtured an original composer’s voice and one that would be as widely acclaimed as his playing.

He became a superb composer for improvisers, crafting pieces that were romantically song-like yet harmonically unpredictable. By the 90s he was leading his own trios with A-list partners from the US and Europe, and in middle age this quiet maestro’s horizons expanded to include large-scale commissions for choirs and orchestras, enthralling solo-piano ventures, animated duos with kindred spirits including the saxophonists Julian Argüelles and Stan Sulzmann, and a burgeoning career as a conservatoire teacher in both Germany and Britain. Through it all, his close musical relationship with his friend Wheeler deepened. Taylor’s moving spoken tribute at Wheeler’s memorial service last October left one of that afternoon’s most indelible memories.

Taylor was born in Manchester and had no formal education in music, but taught himself to play the piano with the examples of Oscar Peterson, Evans and then Hancock as guides. He played in Manchester dance bands before moving to London in 1964, often finding work as an accompanist to singers. He partnered rising British musicians including Surman and Skidmore, the trumpeter Harry Beckett, and the composers Graham Collier and Gibbs. From 1970 to 1973 he worked with Dankworth and Laine, with Ronnie Scott in 1977, and with Winstone, whom he married in 1972. In that decade Taylor also led his own sextet, which included Wheeler.

Azimuth was formed in 1977 (the group was intermittently active until 1994), originally a duo for Taylor and Winstone, but the ECM Records boss Manfred Eicher shrewdly suggested the addition of Wheeler’s vaporous brass sound. The trio conjured a unique chemistry of low-key free improvisation, sometimes wordless vocals, jazz and classical music, and Taylor compositions that often sounded becalmed yet simmering with urgent implications.

Taylor worked with the saxophonist Jan Garbarek (1977-78), with the leading composer/bassists Arild Andersen and Miroslav Vitous (1981-82), and in 1983 with the former Miles Davis arranger and composer Gil Evans’s British orchestra.

Stéphane Kerecki, bass, with John Taylor

He frequently collaborated on Surman’s projects, had his own work performed by Hanover’s radio symphony orchestra with Sulzmann as the saxophone soloist, and in 1988 he briefly formed the jazz and contemporary-classical Foil quartet, with fellow the pianist Pete Saberton, the vibraphonist Frank Ricotti, and the drummer Steve Argüelles, then the drummer with the jazz orchestra Loose Tubes. Taylor’s international stature extended to participation on several recordings with the former Weather Report drummer Peter Erskine’s trio in the 90s, and he became a professor of jazz piano at the Cologne college of music in 1993.

In 1996, Taylor beautifully filled the suggestive spaces on Surman’s Old Testament-inspired oratorio Proverbs and Songs on Salisbury Cathedral’s organ, and in 2000 he rekindled the Azimuth repertoire with the addition of the Smith string quartet at the Weimar festival. He also recorded Verso with the singer Maria Pia De Vito and the guitarist Ralph Towner. A 60th birthday Contemporary Music Network tour in 2002 launched the pianist’s dynamic American trio with the drummer Joey Baron and the bassist Marc Johnson (playing pieces by Towner and Wheeler as well as originals), and he won a BBC Jazz award that year for his ambitious , genre-hopping Green Man Suite, played by the Creative Jazz Orchestra on the same tour.

The sonically sweeping and gracefully paced solo piano album Insight (2003) was widely heralded as one of Taylor’s finest recordings. But the following year’s trio sessions Angel of the Presence and Whirlpool (with the Danish bassist Palle Danielsson and the British drummer Martin France) were close behind in compositional strength and improv ingenuity, and the duos Where Do We Go from Here? (with Wheeler) and Nightfall (with the bassist Charlie Haden) confirmed how resplendent and sensitive Taylor’s playing and his responsiveness to partners remained.

The singer Diana Torto and John Taylor at Sligo Jazz, 2012

Taylor taught jazz at York University from 2005, developed a trio with the Italian singer Diana Torto and the bassist Anders Jormin, and took his old association with Julian Argüelles to a new conversational level.

In 2012 he celebrated his 70th birthday with a BBC Radio 3 commission that included a suite inspired by Kurt Vonnegut (he not only loved the novelist’s work but bore a striking resemblance to him) which typically balanced the lyrical and the byzantine, and formed a new trio unexpectedly inspired by Paul McCartney songs, with Torto and the reeds-player Julian Siegel last year. A new album, Duets – featuring Taylor and one of his most accomplished former students, Richard Fairhurst – is due out next month.

Taylor is survived by his third wife, Carol (nee Weston), and by his sons, Leo and Alex, both musicians, from his marriage to Norma, which ended in divorce. His second wife, Diana de Courcy, died in 2004.

• John Taylor, jazz pianist, born 25 September 1942; died 17 July 2015





• This article was amended on 25 July 2015. The original omitted mention of John Taylor’s second wife, Diana. In consequence, Carol was his third wife.