James Chance, the New York City-based no wave, free jazz and punk funk musician and composer has died at the age of 71.
A post shared via Chance’s official Facebook page said he passed on June 18 in New York, and his death was confirmed by his brother David Siegfried. No cause of death has been given, but Siegfried said that Chance’s health had been in decline for some time with his last live shows having taken place in 2019.
Born James Siegfried in Wisconsin in 1953, Chance trained at music school where he took inspiration from jazz and rock ‘n’roll. He moved to New York City in 1975, intending to play in jazz bands, but decided that he didn’t fit into said music scene.
Instead, Chance founded the rock’n’roll-influenced instrumental quartet Flaming Youth before joining Teenage Jesus And The Jerks with Lydia Lunch. He became a figurehead of New York’s avant-garde ‘no wave’ scene, which rejected the commercialism of new wave music for more minimalist and noise-based sounds, in the late 1970s.
In 1977, he founded the the disco punk band The Contortions, who went on to release their ZE Records debut, Buy, in 1979. Their music, as well as that of Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, appeared on the Brian Eno-produced compilation No New York, which came to be seen as a key report of the no wave scene.
Chance came to be known for his confrontational stage presence at around this time, and some performances saw him engage audience members, including the rock music critic Robert Christgau, in fist fights. There were also frictions between Chance and other members of The Contortions which led to the dissolution of the project in late 1979. Some, however, joined him to release further material under the projects James White And The Contortions and James White And The Blacks in the years that followed.
Having briefly relocated to Paris in the early 1980s, Chance returned to New York City to record and release the album James White Presents The Flaming Demonics. Releases from that point onwards became more infrequent, but he reunited with some original Contortions members in 2001 for occasional live shows which continued through the 2000s.
The note announcing his death read: “James was preceded in death by his father and greatest supporter, Donald Siegfried, in 2019; by his romantic and artistic partner Anya Phillips in 1979, and by his longtime life partner Judy Taylor (Bozanich) in 2020.”
