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Jazz musician Tony Scott, a clarinettist, composer and arranger who worked with greats such as Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, has died in Rome aged 85.
Scott, who also played the saxophone, worked with the greatest jazz musicians over a career that spanned decades and continents.
He played with Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington, and also worked with several singers, including Sarah Vaughan and Harry Belafonte.
"I think a clarinet can be played as strongly as a saxophone or a trumpet," Scott wrote, according to his website.
"It can be a delicate instrument, but it can be robust, can be played with the vitality that some guys have on the other horns."
He was born Anthony Joseph Sciacca in Morristown, New Jersey, into a family of Italian origin.
He travelled extensively since the late 1950s and was among the first jazz musicians to mix the genre with other influences and is considered a forerunner of world music.
He eventually settled in Rome.
Scott documented the work and life of jazz greats in a series of pictures that were displayed in France in the late 1980s.
He wrote an autobiography called Bird, Lady and Me in honour of Parker and Holiday.
"I decided a long time ago I would rather be a jazz musician than rich and famous," his website says. "
"I had the chance to sell out, but I didn't.
I've never regretted that."
