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Trombonist Roswell Rudd, who was equally powerful playing with jazz’s leading avant-gardists such as Archie Shepp and Steve Lacy or collaborating with musicians from Mali and Mongolia, died Thursday night, succumbing to cancer that had been diagnosed in 2013. Rudd was 82.

Born in 1935 in Sharon, Connecticut, Rudd attended Yale University and played there with a student Dixieland band that recorded two albums. However, Rudd by the 1960s was making music with such revolutionary jazz players as pianist Cecil Taylor and saxophonists John Tchicai and Archie Shepp. Rudd appears on Shepp’s groundbreaking mid-’60s Impulse! records Live in San Francisco and Four For Trane.Rudd was also the trombonist in the first edition of Charlie Haden’s Libermation Music Orchestra and he appeared on several Carla Bley recordings in the 1970s. The 1980s and 1990s saw Rudd appearing on albums that explored the music of Thelonious Monk and Herbie Hichols. At some point, Rudd dropped out of the jazz scene for a while, as he told the Citizen in an interview for a 2004 profile.

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Rudd is survived by his partner, Verna Gillis, his long-long friend with whom he became romantically involved in 2000. Gillis is an ethnomusicologist and she and Rudd travelled widely for their work.

This year, the couple released this video for their piece Awesome and Gruesome, inspired by Rudd’s battle with cancer.