Claire Daly, who was regarded by both her fellow musicians and critics as a standard-bearer on the baritone saxophone, died on Tuesday on a friend’s farm in Longmont, Colo. She was 66.
The cause was squamous cell cancer of the neck and head, said the saxophonist Dave Sewelson, a longtime friend.
Thanks to her flexibility on an ungainly instrument and her expressive precision as a soloist, Ms. Daly was a frequent winner of critics’ polls from the Jazz Journalists Association and DownBeat magazine.
Thanking the journalists’ group when she received its 2024 award for best baritone saxophonist, she wrote in May on Facebook: “Kudos to all the baritone players — we get to play bari! We are the lucky ones. My life in music is the smartest thing I’ve done.”
She spent many of the early years of her career playing both jazz and rock in all-female ensembles. Her sturdy playing formed the foundation of the original Diva Jazz Orchestra, which from its founding in 1992 established itself as one of the most potent big bands in jazz, gender notwithstanding.
She left Diva after seven years, tending thereafter toward small ensembles. She collaborated frequently with the pianist Joel Forrester in the quartet People Like Us, with the experimental pop vocalist Nora York, and with Mr. Sewelson in the bottom-heavy trio Two Sisters Inc. (its other member was the bassist Dave Hofstra).
An educator as well as a performer, Ms. Daly for decades taught students at a loft in Chelsea, where she also leased space to fellow musicians and would sometimes let artists stay rent-free. She occasionally hosted parties there exclusively for baritone saxophonists.
“She loved the music and she loved to hang out,” Mr. Sewelson said. He singled out her wit, generosity and love of the jazz community as defining traits. When he was going through a breakup, he said, she let him squat at the loft; when his cat got sick, she took it in and nursed it back to health.
On the GoFundMe page she set up after being diagnosed with cancer last year, close to 600 donations poured in, along with dozens of notes of support. The campaign exceeded its $70,000 goal.
Ms. Daly’s one marriage ended in divorce. She is survived by a brother, Frank.
Claire Anne Daly was born on Feb. 26, 1958, in Bronxville, N.Y., in Westchester County, and raised in nearby Scarsdale. Her father, Patrick, was a salesman for a photographic supply company and a jazz fan. Her mother, Helen (Carr) Daly, managed the home.
She took up the alto saxophone at age 12. Her fate was sealed shortly thereafter, when her father took her to hear the Buddy Rich Orchestra at the Westchester County Center.
“I was standing on my chair screaming. I had been playing saxophone for about three months. I said to my father, ‘I would do anything to be on that bus,’” Ms. Daly was quoted by the scholar Alexander Stewart in his book “Making the Scene: Contemporary New York City Big Band Jazz” (2007). “It was the most unbelievable thing I had ever heard in my life.”
She joined a local marching band and a neighboring school’s jazz ensemble, then went on to Berklee College of Music in Boston. Embedding herself in the city’s active music scene, she had another coming-of-age experience at a performance by Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the blustery, genre-defying multi-reed player. “He’s my hero on 100 levels,” she said in 2020, when her self-produced 2008 album paying tribute to Mr. Kirk, “Rah! Rah!,” was rereleased on Ride Symbol Records.
Ms. Daly graduated from Berklee in 1980 and moved to Cape Cod, where she joined Dish, an all-woman new wave band, and then toured the area with another rock band, playing alto and tenor saxophone. After moving to New York in 1985, she bought her first baritone saxophone, fell in love with the low end and “never looked back,” she told the website jazzbarisax.com.
“I played one note on it, and it was epiphany day,” she said in a video interview with the jazz journalist and filmmaker Bret Primack. “I knew that that was my voice.”
“It seemed to come from her person,” Mr. Forrester said in an interview. “She had a depth of personality, and the baritone is a big horn with a big sound. And yet people who play it really well have to be able to temper that big sound and play delicately. And she learned how to do that.”
Ms. Daly took over the baritone chair in the Kit McClure Band, a prominent all-female jazz ensemble that backed the pop singer Robert Palmer for a time, before becoming a founding member of the Diva Jazz Orchestra, led by the drummer and Buddy Rich acolyte Sherrie Maricle.
At the end of the 1990s, leaving Diva and its intense tour schedule behind, Ms. Daly became part of the root system of the New York scene — hosting sessions and lessons at her loft, sometimes heading over to Ornette Coleman’s apartment to hang out, and gigging with Ms. York, Mr. Forrester, Mr. Sewelson and numerous others.
She released her debut album, “Swing Low,” in 1999. The album’s core quartet, featuring the pianist Eli Yamin, the drummer Peter Grant and Mr. Hofstra, would remain Ms. Daly’s go-to combo for years.
She released seven albums as a leader, winning fans in high places along the way: “Swing Low” is part of the collection at Bill Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock, Ark. Her final album, “VuVu for Frances,” featuring her former Berklee professor George Garzone on tenor saxophone, came out last year.
Ms. Daly sought out a range of performing opportunities, from traditional jazz to free-improvising scenarios. Similarly, she took exception to anything that might label her music based solely on her gender.
When Dr. Stewart indicated that his conversation with her would be included in a single chapter of his book devoted to women’s ensembles, Ms. Daly responded frankly: “Ultimately, what most women musicians would like to see is that they don’t have to be in a separate chapter.”
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