Mourning the passing of Pink Floyd Keyboardist - Richard Wright.

A multi-instrumentalist, Wright had working knowledge of cello,
trombone, guitar and violin. Largely self-taught, like Barrett,
Wright learned to play scales and chords in his own idiosyncratic
fashion. Wright had grown up entranced by jazz and classical music,
listening to Duke Ellington and Aaron Copeland. He taught himself to
play while laid up with a broken foot. Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis'
1959 masterpiece, Kind of Blue, featuring John Coltrane on
saxophone and Bill Evans on piano, was a seminal influence. The modal
structures of that album were to prove a key influence on Wright's
keyboard style.

Wright told Mark Blake, `When I was first in The Floyd I wasn't into pop music at all - I was listening to jazz and when The Beatles.released `Please Please Me' I didn't like it at all. I thought it was
utterly puerile.' Growing up in the days before rock and roll, Wright listened to classical music before getting into traditional jazz players like Humphrey Lyttelton and Kenny Ball. `Then I discovered Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue album and got very excited. Porgy
and Bess is a brilliant record - the nearest thing to a trumpet
made to sound like the human voice. The influences in The Floyd came
from different areas. Syd was more into Bo Diddley; I had the more
classical approach.' When time came to play with Wright, they would
find their interests dovetailed well. Barrett's glissandi circling
clusters of sparse root chords played by Wright.

Wright's keyboard style had a unique melancholic grandeur. He had an
ear for exotic sounds, bringing in Middle Eastern Phrygian scales into
his mix. Never one to play lightning fast or pound the notes out,
Wright conjured up his unique style with patience. What was left out
was as important as what stayed in, and Wright took a calm and
methodical approach. The influence of Davis sideman Bill Evans
introspective, melancholic piano was strong. Modal jazz had minimal
chords and relied on melody and intervals of different modes. A slow
harmonic rhythm opened space in the music, in contrast to bebop's
frenzy.

Wright would develop a strong interest in the splinter free jazz
movement, listening to Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane
and Thelonious Monk's albums. Add to this his taste for classical
composers Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven and Béla Bartók
and there was an interesting and unusual convergence of styles in
Wright's playing.

Wright's organ proved an ideal counterpoint to Barrett's guitar. Pink
Floyd's core sound stemmed from Wright as much as Barrett. Wright has
not received proper credit, often matching Syd note for sustained
note. Wright became intuitive and agile, with a strong melodic sense,
his languorous chords contrasting with flurries of scales. Jenner:
`That Farfisa and all the pedal notes and sustaining chords he used
combined with the echoes from Syd, who was much more sparkly.'

Wright accompanied rapid alternating fluid leads and cacophonous
textures in Barrett's guitar playing. Barrett would switch to static
rhythm while Wright unleashed colour washes. Composer Phil Salathé
says, `Wright's approach was highly scalar, often built from
chromatically-inflected modal forms that remained more or less stable
throughout a particular solo. Barrett, by contrast, favoured direct
chromaticism, taking a set of pitches from a particular scale or mode
and transposing them by fixed amounts, most often a semitone.'

Wright used, in his words, `chordal progression and melodic lines just
above them' to weave his web. Wright incorporated Charles Mingus'
radical innovations like pitting flatted-fifth intervals outside the
chord, out of context, creating floating intervals that suggest their
presence without a literal presence inside the chord. Wright would
play the `blue tones' with his right hand, articulating a tone foreign
to the home key, Say, an E-flat, while his left hand held down simple
progressions in C.

Wright learned much of this from playing along with pieces such as
Aaron Copland's [i]Four Piano Blues, which incorporate these and
similar devices. The implications of bi-tonality would appear and
disappear like a mirage. Together, they used dissonance as
suggestion, with chord sequences that hover at the edge of resolution,
or resolve on the most unexpected chords. Salathé notes, `Indeed, one
of Wright's most enduring virtues is his penchant for surprising and
non-stereotyped harmonies, and much of this probably derives from his
early exposure to this music.'

Wright added, `American classical composer Aaron Copland's 1962
Appalachian Spring is his most famous work. I discovered him
back in the late '60s after hearing something on the radio. Like all
my favorite music, there's something in his material that touches me.
I think it's the chordal progression and the melodic lines just above
them that do it for me here - and it's very peaceful. When I listen
to the stuff that I've played over the years I feel I've been heavily
influenced by Copland, albeit subconsciously.'

As Gilmour said, 'Rick Wright was the soul of Pink Floyd.' A
sublime musician, whose elegant and economical melodic lines are a sonic marvel.
Rick Wright will be sorely missed.