Ahmad Jamal dies at 92: Acclaimed jazz pianist who influenced Miles Davis

Acclaimed jazz pianist, composer and set person Ahmad Jamal has died aged 92, his woman has said.

The origin was prostate cancer, his girl Sumayah Jamal told the New York Times.

Ahmad Jamal was a lifelong person of jazz icon Miles Davis and influenced a procreation of musicians.

He was cognize for a sparse playing benignant - often placing soundlessness betwixt notes - and critics hailed his "less is much dynamics".

He said during his beingness that helium liked to honour what helium described arsenic the spaces successful the music.

He started his seven-decade jazz vocation arsenic a teen successful the bebop property of virtuosic showmanship - but his benignant evolved rapidly.

His laid-back attack rapidly became influential and commercialized occurrence followed with his 1958 medium At the Pershing: But Not for Me - 1 of the best-selling instrumental records of its time.

In a portion written past twelvemonth to people the merchandise of immoderate of his unissued recordings, the mag the New Yorker wrote that successful the 1950s, "his philharmonic conception was 1 of the large innovations of the time, adjacent if its spare, audacious originality was mislaid connected galore listeners".

Jamal's beingness agelong friend, the trumpeter Miles Davis, erstwhile said: "All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal."

In his autobiography, Davis wrote that Jamal "knocked maine retired with his conception of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement, and the mode helium phrased notes and chords and passages".

This was a sentiment echoed by Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett, among others.

Even successful aboriginal decades his power was evident, with his soft riffs sampled by hep hop artists including Nas and De La Soul.

Jamal won countless awards implicit his career, including France's Ordre des Arts and des Lettres successful 2007 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award successful 2017.

"I'm inactive evolving, whenever I beryllium down astatine the piano," Jamal said successful an interrogation 2022 with the Times. "I inactive travel up with immoderate caller ideas."