#TBT: Walter Zuber Armstrong

Tune into our Throwback-Thursday posts this Black History Month as we highlight the work and lives of Black artists who have been involved in Artspace’s history, and who have shaped the landscape arts community in Nogojiwinong/Peterborough.

Feb 22, 2024

For this week's Throwback Thursday, we’re traveling back to the archive to City Stage. An Artspace performance initiative that ran for many years in the 1980s, City Stage presented music and theater acts, and frequent parties. On September 15, 1982 Peterborough was treated to a multi-instrumental performance by avant-garde jazz musician, Walter Zuber Armstrong.

In Rob Wilkes’ review of the performance in The Arthur, he wrote, “It is every musician's quest to develop that direct, distortionless connection between his or her music or soul. Armstrong appears to have nurtured that connection very carefully and made it the heart of his work.” 

Allmusic.com provides insight into more of Zuber Armstrong's backstory and career. The American-born musician spent much of his performing time between the US and Canada, specifically in Vancouver. He studied both at the New York College of Music and Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music and cited his influences as “jazz legends Eric Dolphy and Anthony Braxton. Like them, he was drawn to the idea of multi-instrumental textural dexterity” (as written in Zuber Armstrong’s Biography by Eugene Chadbourne).

The work of Zuber Armstrong was prolific yet poorly documented. He is thought to have toured at least once through the US and Canada. Throughout his career, he collaborated with American and Canadian artists including Paul Plimley, Greg Simpson, Milo Fine, and Steve Lacy, and impressively self-published 8 albums. 

Walter Zuber Armstrong died in 1998 at only 61 following “his final concerts in the late '90s at Bellingham events in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and Black History Month “ (Chadbourne).

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/walter-zuber-armstrong-mn0001800914