Word has reached The Star of the death of Timothy F. Marquand, a part-time resident of Sag Harbor for many years and a founder of the Jazz Composers Orchestra Association. Mr. Marquand died of pneumonia in February at Aspen Valley Hospital in Colorado. He was 83 and had been ill with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for several years.
In a 1971 profile in The New York Times, a 30-year-old Timothy Marquand, described as having “that all-American, upper-class, ageless-boy-look,” is visited in his Upper West Side, Manhattan, residence, which is described in great detail. “Just now, the stereo set is going full-blast,” wrote John Gruen. “The music, a strange, mad jazz, with basses, trumpets, trombones, saxophones, strings and piano crashing into one another, producing thick, bristling sounds eons removed from the familiar pre-fifties improvisational ‘sets’ around a familiar tune. This is jazz that jars the nerves, music that explodes into myriad fragments.”
“The music envelops the room in which sits a cherubic, blond, blue-eyed young man in a sweater and tight, brown corduroy pants. . . . He’s listening to an album recorded in 1969 by the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Association, with the music composed and conducted by Michael Mantler, and featuring pianist Cecil Taylor, cornetist Don Cherry, tenor saxophonists Gato Barbieri and Pharoah Sanders, guitarist Larry Coryell and trombonist Roswell Rudd.”
Mr. Marquand had helped to organize the Jazz Composers Orchestra, of which he was president, in 1955, devoting much of his time, energy, and resources to it. He was involved with the New Music Distribution Service, an Orchestra Association program and nonprofit founded by Mr. Mantler and the pianist and composer Carla Bley to distribute experimental contemporary music recordings. He was also a partner in the American affiliate of London-based Sterns Music, which specializes in African and Brazilian music.
He worked with the Young & Rubicam advertising and marketing agency, composing and recording music for commercials for Honda and other Japanese companies, as well as for promotional films for ski resorts in Colorado, and he operated his own record label, Kent’s Island Music. “But his real love was directing jazz in the direction where it used classical orchestration with jazz instruments,” his wife, Jane Shaffer, said.
Timothy F. Marquand was born in New York City on Nov. 16, 1941, to John P. Marquand, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of works including “The Late George Apley” and “Point of No Return,” and the former Adelaide Hooker, a descendant of the Connecticut Colony founder Thomas Hooker. He grew up in the city, also living in Greenwich, N.Y.; Kent’s Island, Mass.; Salt Cay in the Bahamas, and Aspen and Old Snowmass, Colo. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Harvard University, and the Mannes School of Music in Manhattan.
He and Ms. Shaffer were married in 2005. On the South Fork, Mr. Marquand was known to play piano “for fun,” including at the former Maidstone Arms restaurant in East Hampton, his wife said. He had the keys to the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor, where he composed, played, and kept its piano tuned. “He became like a ghost in that church,” Ms. Shaffer said. “His work life was in New York, but this,” she said of Sag Harbor, “was his retreat, where he would get inspired. I call this his heartland, along with Colorado.”
Carla Bley, who died in 2023, “was key in his life,” Ms. Shaffer said. “He lent his grandmother’s grand piano to her for 20 years, and she composed much of her music on it. Timothy was on ‘Escalator Over the Hill,’ “ a more than 90-minute “jazz opera” composed by Bley and recorded between 1968 and 1971. “He was much like an angel for all of that,” Ms. Shaffer said, “and not one to put the spotlight on himself.”
Along with jazz and classical piano, he played the trumpet and wrote music to Ms. Shaffer’s poetry. He also enjoyed skiing and hiking. He was a member of the Century Association, the social, arts, and dining club in Manhattan, and the Signet Society, Harvard University’s arts and letters society, in Cambridge, Mass.
“He was so much like his father in the sense that he was a great raconteur, very droll,” said Christina Roden, with whom Mr. Marquand worked at Sterns Music’s American affiliate. “But the main thing is, he was possibly the kindest human being I’ve ever known. He was very supportive of young jazz musicians, and worked very hard to help them get into the union. He was just a really, really good guy.”
In addition to his wife, Mr. Marquand is survived by a stepson, Brooks Shaffer of Boulder, Colo. He also leaves his dog, Finn.
A celebration of his life will take place at the Century Association in November.
Mr. Marquand’s family has suggested memorial contributions to the Center for Clean Air Policy, 700 12th Street NW, Suite 700, Washington, D.C. 20005, or ccap.org/donate.
