Wendell Logan
*Wendell Logan was born on this date in 1940. He was a Black jazz and classical composer.
Wendell Morris Logan was born in Thomson, Georgia. His first musical studies were with his father, an amateur alto saxophonist. In 1962, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in music from Florida A&M University, which he had attended on a football scholarship. At Florida A&M in 1962, Logan heard Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite for the first time. This initial exposure to the twelve-tone technique led Logan to undertake a path leading to a career as a composer. He earned a master's degree in music in 1964 from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and was awarded a Ph.D. in music theory and composition in 1968 from the University of Iowa.
After graduation, Logan served on the faculties of Ball State University, Florida A&M University, and Western Illinois University before joining the Oberlin Conservatory of Music faculty in 1973, where he eventually became chairman of the jazz studies department and professor of African-American music. When Logan first arrived at Oberlin, jazz was exclusively an extracurricular activity. Dr. Logan began teaching jazz music shortly after joining Oberlin, forming the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble in 1973. Logan developed a curriculum for a jazz major in 1989. By 1991, he helped modify Oberlin's admission standards to allow students to enter the conservatory based on their talent as jazz performers.
He won a Guggenheim Fellowship. In addition to playing soprano saxophone and trumpet, Logan composed jazz and concert music. Among his concert works are the 1989 "Runagate, Runagate," based on a poem by Robert Hayden about a fugitive slave, and "Doxology Opera: The Doxy Canticles" in 2001, which features a libretto by Paul Carter Harrison. Logan believed being described as a "black composer" was a two-edged sword. He would have preferred music by African American composers to be performed alongside works by other composers.
Regarding that distinction, he remarked: "No one is asking for a special day: 'Here's the day for black American composers.' That's demeaning. But it's better than nothing." On his Oberlin College profile, Logan described jazz as "our classical music" and said it "belongs here just as much as Americans belong on this soil." A resident of Oberlin, Ohio, Logan died at age 69 on June 15, 2010, after suffering a short illness.
