Documenting Oliver Lake's Art, in his own words and others'

I'm Howard Mandel, a veteran jazz journalist, editor, educator and producer, helping multi-dimensional artist Oliver Lake -- saxophonist, composer, co-founder of the World Saxophone Quartet, poet, visual artist -- raise funds covering expenses towards manuscript preparation and publication of Passin' Thru - The Oliver Lake Reader, by SUNY Press in autumn 2026.

The Reader will comprise all of Oliver's writings, focusing on his never-before-published candid autobiography which will be expanded to include present-day interviews with an array of his noted collaborators about their work and times together.

I'll do the interviews -- with Oliver's sons Jahi and Gene Lake, musicians such as Jerome Harris, Brandon Ross, Pheeroan Ak Laff, David Murray, Joseph Bowie, Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman and Baikida Carroll, Tom Chiu of Flux Quartet, and Henry Reese and Diane Samuels from City of Asylum, Pittsburgh's community arts and expression sanctuary where Oliver was an artist-in-residence. T

Born Sept 14, 1942, in Marianna, AK, Oliver Lake is a major American artist who has composed works for performance by an array of contemporary ensembles, across genres. A reeds and woodwinds virtuoso, poet-playwright and visual art-maker at the center of cultural activism since starting B.A.G. (Black Arts Group) in St. Louis circa 1968, Lake has established his unique voice and maintained it, touring internationally from the jazz hotbed of New York City for more than 50 years. He's renown for his prodigious, critically acclaimed discography and high profile a soloist and ensemble leader/co-founder of Trio 3 and the World Saxophone Quartet, leader of Jump Up! and collaborator with the Flux String Quartet.

I've written the books Future Jazz and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz; editedThe Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues and The Jazz Omnibus, among other books, and have contributed to magazines including DownBeat, the New York Times and Village Voice. I've reported for National Public Radio, taught at New York University, and serve as president of the Jazz Journalists Association.

Please consider kicking in a few $$ to help Oliver and me get this project into print and subsequently promoted. SUNY Press is a well-regarded academic publisher, which intends to launch a new series of writing on contemporary jazz and jazz-adjacent music. Passin' Thru: The Oliver Lake Reader could be first title out on that list.