Max Roach

A percussionist, drummer, and composer who revolutionized bebop, composer Max Roach grew up in Brooklyn, becoming a ubiquitous presence on the New York jazz scene by the 1940s. Roach received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, the French Grand Prix du Disque, and was named Jazz Master by Harvard University. Starting in 1972, he was musician-in-residence and professor of music at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, one of the first schools in the United States to introduce jazz as a subject of serious academic study.