William Shadrack Cole (b. Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

, 1937) is an American jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 musician and educator. Cole, most unusually for his genre, specializes in non-Western wind instrument

Wind instrument

A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator , in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into a mouthpiece set at the end of the resonator. The pitch of the vibration is determined by the length of the tube and by manual modifications of...

s, including the Ghanaian atenteben

Atenteben

The atenteben is a bamboo flute from Ghana. It is played vertically, like the European recorder, and, like the recorder, can be played diatonically as well as chromatically. Although originally used as a traditional instrument , beginning in the 20th century it has also been used in contemporary...

, Chinese suona

Suona

The suona ; also called laba or haidi is a Han Chinese shawm . It has a distinctively loud and high-pitched sound, and is used frequently in Chinese traditional music ensembles, particularly those that perform outdoors...

, Korean hojok and piri

Piri

The piri is a Korean double reed instrument, used in both the folk and classical music of Korea. It is made of bamboo. Its large reed and cylindrical bore gives it a sound mellower than that of many other types of oboe....

, South India

South India

South India is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area...

n nagaswaram

Nadaswaram

The nadaswaram, also spelt nadhaswaram, and also called nagaswaram , is one of the most popular classical musical instruments in the South Indian culture and the world's loudest non-brass acoustic instrument...

, North Indian shehnai

Shehnai

The shehnai, shahnai, shenai or mangal vadya, is an aerophonic instrument, a double reed conical oboe, common in North India, West India and Pakistan, made out of wood, with a metal flare bell at the end...

, Tibetan trumpet, and Australian didjeridu. Cole has a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

, writing his dissertation on the music of John Coltrane

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

.

Cole is the founder and leader of the Untempered Ensemble and has performed with Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....

, Jayne Cortez

Jayne Cortez

Jayne Cortez is an American poet, and performance artist.-Biography:She grew up in California. She is the author of ten books of poems and performer of her poetry with music on nine recordings. Her voice is celebrated for its political, surrealistic, dynamic innovations in lyricism, and visceral...

, Julius Hemphill

Julius Hemphill

Julius Arthur Hemphill was a jazz composer and saxophone player. He performed mainly on alto saxophone; less often soprano and tenor saxophones and flute.-Biography:...

, Sam Rivers

Sam Rivers

Samuel Carthorne Rivers , is an American jazz musician and composer. He performs on soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica and piano....

, James Blood Ulmer, and Fred Ho

Fred Ho

Fred Ho is an American jazz baritone saxophonist, composer, bandleader, playwright, writer, and social activist....

. He records for the Boxholder label.

He has served as professor of music at Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

 from 1972 until 1974 and Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...

 from 1974 until his retirement in the 1990s. He currently teaches in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University

Department of African American Studies - Syracuse University

The Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University is a leading Africana studies department in the United States. It is a prominent independent department at Syracuse University that has had a long history of activism and scholarship in Black and Pan African Studies...

.http://aas.syr.edu/faculty.html#prof_6

Cole has also authored two books about jazz musician Miles Davis

Miles Davis

Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

, one entitled Miles Davis: A Musical Biography (W. Morrow Publishers, 1974), and the other entitled Miles Davis: The Early Years (1994, Da Capo Press). Cole also authored a biography of John Coltrane

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

simply entitled John Coltrane (2001, Da Capo Press).

Writings

• Cole, Bill (1974). "The Style of John Coltrane, 1955-1967." Ph.D. dissertation. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University.

External links

• Shadrack, Inc.
• Bill Cole page at Syracuse University African American Studies department