Stuart Nevitt, co-founder, composer, and drummer/percussionist of the
eclectic band Shadowfax, has died at the age of 56. Nevitt died Mar. 15
at his home in Rio Rancho, NM, of complications from type 1 diabetes
and heart disease.

The sextet, which Nevitt originally organized with Chuck Greenberg,
G.E. Stinson, and Phil Maggini in an Illinois farmhouse in 1972, won a
Grammy in 1988 for its album “Folksongs for a Nuclear Village,” and was
nominated for another one in 1992 for “Esperanto” after the band
reformed with Armen Chakmakian, Ray Yslas, and Andy Abad. Due to the
untimely passing of Greenberg, the group stopped recording and touring
in 1995.

Nevitt continued to perform and record, most recently producing and
releasing his first solo project, “The Marion Kind,” which is
stylistically similar to Shadowfax while expanding on the
groundbreaking sound of the group which featured the pioneering work of
Greenberg’s lyricon, the first woodwind synthesizer.

It was this unique sound that caught the attention of Windham Hill
Records founder William Ackerman, who signed Shadowfax as the first
band to record on his label, releasing the eponymously titled album in
1982. Subsequent tours found them headlining such venues as Carnegie
Hall, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Red Rocks, and The
Montreux Jazz Festival. The band often chafed at the New Age label
ascribed to it, preferring the term world beat, attesting to the
difficulty reviewers often had describing their music. The Times’ late
jazz expert Leonard Feather once described the multidisciplinary sound
as “American, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, European,
incorporating classical, rock, folk and (minimally) jazz, variously
acoustic and electric…easier to listen to than describe.”

The band’s unusual name was selected by Greenberg and Maggini while
leafing through “Lord of the Rings” and finding Gandalf the wizard’s
horse.

The band went on to record ten albums and released two greatest-hits
packages, most recently “Pure Shadowfax” on Sony/BMG in 2006. A book
entitled “A Pause in the Rain” chronicling the band’s history was
published by Joy Greenberg in 2006. Nevitt is survived by his companion
of many years, Marion Unterburger.