Ray, a jazz saxophonist and composer who was a star in Denmark, was surely the oldest member of our class — 44 when we graduated, 80 when he died Nov. 2, 2012, the day he was scheduled to receive a career-achievement award, the Leo Mathisen Prize, in Copenhagen.
Born in Boston, he had moved to Denmark in the 1960s. He returned there after Princeton — and after several years at CBS Records in New York — to work as an arranger, com poser, and director of the famed Danish Radio Jazz Group. Later, Ray also taught at the University of Copenhagen. Thomas Michel-
sen, music editor of the Danish newspaper Politiken, compared him to Duke Ellington.
At Princeton, Nina Bang-Jensen, who has her own Danish roots, valued Ray for a “warmth and modesty so extraordinary that most of us didn’t know what a jazz legend he was.” Classmate Michael Watkins remem bers how Ray enjoyed “the intellectual aspects of Princeton” and the undergraduate experience. “Most of us were too self-absorbed, too young, to get it,” he says. “He got it.”
The class sends condolences to Ray’s wife, Mette, and their daughter, Sarah.