Jazzman Frank Mantooth has died

GARDEN CITY, Kansas (Jazz Ambassadors magazine) - The music stopped in Garden City as the news was announced Friday. Frank Mantooth, the community's famous resident musician, an 11-time Grammy Award nominee and beloved figure, died Friday morning. Mantooth died Friday at his home from what appears to be natural causes.
But along with the ripples one would expect in the 56-year-old composer, pianist and musical arranger's adopted home of Garden City, musicians he has worked with over the years agree the world of jazz music will be all the poorer for his loss.

Mike Metheny, former editor of the Kansas City, Mo., publication Jazz Ambassadors Magazine, said Mantooth's recordings featured a "Who's Who" of the musical genre that he easily stood among.
"Frank was a very important jazz musician, not just in the Midwest, but in the entire jazz world," he said. "This is news in the global jazz community."

Mantooth was born April 11, 1947, in Tulsa, Okla., into a family where his mother played the piano, which he picked up early on. By the age of 14, he was playing in public, but couldn't leave the bandstand because of liquor laws.
Years later, the jazz pianist earned his bachelor's degree in music from North Texas State University in 1969 and contributed arrangements as a member of the Air Force Academy Falconaires from 1969 to 1973. He followed that with seven years in Austria, where he earned his piano degree from the Vienna Hochschule fuer Musik in 1977.
During the following years back in the United States, it would be difficult to list all he accomplished. Mantooth has been commissioned to write music for Doc Severinsen, The Kansas City Symphony and the Madison Symphony Orchestra. He taught at several universities, high schools and summer jazz camps.
He published five volumes of "The Best Chord Changes for the World's Greatest Standards" for the Hal Leonard Corp., in addition to more than 165 works for combo and jazz ensembles since 1978. He was a 1999 recipient of the Florence Crittenton Foundation's Citizen of the Year award, and that year, the Wichita Jazz Festival also gave him the annual Homer Osborne award for outstanding contributions to jazz education. He also was included in the 2001 edition of Grove's Dictionary of Jazz.
He also made five of his own albums that yielded the 11 Grammy nominations.