Ed Summerlin

About

Liturgical, avant-garde, and free jazz pioneer who also taught music and worked as a performer and composer.

Before Fame

While he was attending University of North Texas for his MM, he composed "Requiem for Mary Jo," dedicated to his young daughter who passed away as a baby.

Trivia

He was the founder and director of the jazz program at the City College of New York for more than a decade.

Family Life

He married his first wife Virginia Lee Allen in the late 1940s and got remarried to a woman named Mary Elizabeth Bouknight. His third wife, Karen Jones Summerlin, married him in 1974 and they raised two sons.

Associated With

Summerlin worked in New York as a freelance musician in the 1960s with Don Ellis.