Dave Matthews Band sax player LeRoi Moore dies
** FILE ** In this Monday, May 9, 2005 file photo, LeRoi Moore of the Dave Matthews Band performs with the band at New York’s Roseland Ballroom. Moore is recovering from an ATV accident on his Virginia farm. According to the band’s Web site, Moore was taken to the University of Virginia Health System for treatment after the Monday, June 30, 2008 wreck in Charlottesville. A publicist for the Dave Matthews Band said on Tuesday Aug. 19, 2008 that sax player LeRoi Moore died Tuesday, of injuries suffered in the June accident, at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles. Moore was 46. (AP Photo/Michael Kim, File)
August 18, 2008
LOS ANGELES — Dave Matthews Band saxophone player LeRoi Moore, one of the group’s founding members and a key part of its eclectic jazz-infused sound, died Tuesday from sudden complications stemming from injuries he sustained in an all-terrain vehicle accident in June. He was 46.
Moore died at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, according to a statement released on the band’s Web site. The statement did not specify what led to his death.
Moore was initially hospitalized in late June after the accident on his farm outside Charlottesville, Va. He was later discharged and had recently returned to his Los Angeles home to begin a physical rehabilitation program when complications forced him back to the hospital on July 17, the band said.
Galina Shinder, a nursing supervisor at Hollywood Presbyterian, said the hospital could not release any details.
Ambrosia Healy, the band’s publicist, said the band’s show Tuesday night in Los Angeles was not canceled. Saxophonist Jeff Coffin, who played with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, had been sitting in for Moore during the band’s summer tour.
Moore, who liked to wear his trademark dark sunglasses at the bands’ live concerts, had classical training but said jazz was his main musical influence, according to a biography on the band’s Web site.
“But at this stage I don’t really consider myself a jazz musician,” Moore said in the biography. Playing with the Dave Matthews Band was “almost better than a jazz gig,” he said. “I have plenty of space to improvise, to try new ideas.”
Lead singer Dave Matthews credited Moore with arranging many of his songs, which combine Cajun fiddle-playing, African-influenced rhythms and Matthews’ playful but haunting voice.
