ANTHONY WELLER

1957 - 2021

WELLER, Anthony Musician and writer Anthony Weller, age 63, died on June 3, 2021 as a result of complications from primary progressive multiple sclerosis, a disease he battled since 2006. A longtime resident of Gloucester, MA, Weller also lived in Cyprus and coastal Italy. Weller was born on September 18, 1957 in Macon, GA. He was the son of Gladys Lasky, a British ballet scholar, and George Weller, an American war correspondent. He began playing jazz and classical guitar professionally at age 18, graduating with a degree in music from Yale. Weller also trained as a composer and wrote works for piano, orchestra, voice, and chamber ensembles, as well as for solo guitar. On classical guitar, Weller was a longtime disciple of the virtuoso Rey de la Torre, one of the great guitarists of the 20th century. He concertized and taught all over the world and premiered the work of composers Julián Orbón, David Erlanger, Steven Kinigstein, and Robert J. Bradshaw. He also performed with the Boston Artists Ensemble, and with flamenco guitarists Valdemar Phoenix and Peter Regis. He gave master classes and concerts at the 2004 and 2006 Newport Guitar Festivals. Weller's jazz studies were with Allen Hanlon, Ike Isaacs, Pat Martino and Tuck Andress. A greater influence were his friendships and concerts with British guitarist John Etheridge and with legendary solo guitarist Tommy Crook of Tulsa, OK. He regularly collaborated with Turkish Cypriot pianist Arman Ratip, playing a hybrid of jazz and Turkish folk music, and performed frequently with clarinetist Billy Novick and bassist Thomas Hebb. Weller was also part of four prominent groups. As a member of the Jon Jarvis Trio, he recorded with violinist Stéphane Grappelli. He was a co-founder of Chamber Jazz, and, since 1995, was guitarist with famed trumpeter Herb Pomeroy's trio. More recently he joined forces with vocalist Maggie Galloway and bassist Bob Nieske. While in New York in the 1980s and 1990s he began to work as a journalist, traveling extensively throughout Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, the South Pacific, Central America, and the Caribbean. Over the years he wrote more than one hundred and fifty articles for such well-known journals as The Paris Review, Forbes, The New York Times Magazine, G.Q., Gourmet, Harpers, Playboy, Vogue, Smithsonian, Esquire, among many others. He received a Lowell Thomas Award for foreign reporting in 1993. In 1996, he published The Garden of the Peacocks; in 1997 a travel memoir of India and Pakistan, Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road; and in 1998 another novel, The Polish Lover. Another novel, The Siege of Salt Cove, was published in 2004. His fourth novel, The Land of Later On, appeared in 2011. Anthony edited First into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan (introduced by Walter Cronkite). This was the reporting of his father, George Weller, which had been blocked by censors during the war and thought lost to history until Anthony found copies among his late father's papers. Acclaimed by historians, it was named by Kirkus Review as one of the best books of the year. Subsequently Anthony edited a follow-up compilation of his father's finest war reporting, Weller's War: A Legendary Correspondent's Saga of World War II on Five Continents. Anthony is survived by Kylee Smith, his beloved wife of 24 years, and by a community of friends and fans for whom his absence leaves a gap that will never be filled. The grace, determination, and courage with which he endured his cruel disease was an inspiration to all who knew him.

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