Wallace Roney, a celebrated jazz trumpeter and Miles Davis protégé, has died after contracting the coronavirus. He was 59. The virtuoso succumbed to the virus at Paterson, NJ’s St.
Joseph’s University Medical Center on Tuesday, less than a week after being admitted with COVID-19 symptoms on March 25, NPR reports. “I am saddened to confirm that the iconic trumpeter and jazz legend Wallace Roney passed away due to complications of COVID-19 this morning just before noon,” the Philadelphia-born musician’s publicist, Lydia Liebman, said in a statement, to CNN. “Working with Wallace was and will remain one of the greatest privileges of my life,” she says, “It was an honor to represent him and to be part of his musical world.