Music
Roland Hanna
1932–2002 · jazz pianist, composer, educator
Detroit-born pianist of the city's celebrated bebop piano school, a Cass Tech graduate and longtime Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra member, knighted by Liberia in 1970.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Hackensack, New Jersey
aged 70- Birth name
- Roland Pembroke Hanna
- Also known as
- Sir Roland Hanna
- Detroit years
- 1932–1953
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Roland Hanna was born in Detroit in 1932 and grew up in the city's thriving late-1940s bebop scene. He began classical piano at 11, and his friend Tommy Flanagan drew him toward jazz. At Cass Technical High School he kept up a serious musical education and, for about five years, also studied cello with a member of the Detroit Symphony. After Army service he studied briefly at the Eastman School of Music and then, from 1955, at Juilliard in New York, while working with Benny Goodman and Charles Mingus. From 1966 to 1974 he played in the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, led in part by the Pontiac-born trumpeter Thad Jones, and later in the New York Jazz Quartet. In 1970 Liberia's President William Tubman made him an honorary knight for benefit concerts supporting education, and he was known thereafter as Sir Roland Hanna. Critics grouped him with Hank Jones, Barry Harris and Flanagan as Detroit's great jazz pianists.
Highlights
- Graduated from Detroit's Cass Technical High School
- Introduced to jazz by his friend Tommy Flanagan
- Member of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, 1966–1974
- Knighted by Liberia in 1970: “Sir Roland Hanna”
- Professor of jazz at Queens College, New York
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · late 1940s
Cass Technical High School
The downtown magnet school from which he graduated; Tommy Flanagan went to Northern High School.