Jersey History: Sir Roland Hanna
Longtime Teaneck resident Sir Roland Hanna [1932-2002] scaled the heights of the jazz world in his short 70 years integrating classical into his bag of swing and bebop. Dick Katz, who co-founded Milestone Records in 1966, once said of Hanna, “because of Roland's extensive training, he developed a bravura technique that led him into areas where many jazz pianists don't go. He learned how to integrate his classical background into much of what he composed and played. Roland had the rare gift of being able to truly improvise from scratch, letting his imagination take him almost anywhere on a given theme. He was not dependent on any specific style to tell his stories. He never played a piece the same way twice."
Born in Detroit, he served his country in the military from 1950 to 1952. He was in the bands of Benny Goodman and Charles Mingus. He had his own bands too and toured behind The Iron Curtain in 1972. A Juilliard graduate, he also was a main cog in The Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra who held court at The Village Vanguard in New York City every Monday night for decades. Later in the 1970s, he formed The New York Jazz Quartet with flautist Hubert Laws, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Billy Cobham (masters all). In the ‘80s, semi-retired, he worked behind Sarah Vaughan, writing her “Seasons” song in 1982 which sparked his interest in returning full-time.
In the mid-‘80s on into the early ‘90s, he was a member of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, returning to his first love, classical, which he studied ferociously at age 11 on, writing chamber, orchestral and ballet music.
It was 1970 when he was given an honorary knighthood by the President of Liberia, William Tubman, in recognition of a series of concerts he gave there to raise money for music schools, thus he became a “Sir.” Hanna always said how important music education was in molding the minds of the young. He became a Professor of Jazz at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College in New York City. He died in Hackensack of a cardiac viral infection. Over and above his 55 albums as leader or co-leader, he appeared on albums by 41 different artists.