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Bowie was in the midst of a European tour with his Brass Fantasy Band when he became ill and was forced to return to New York, where he was hospitalized immediately. He died two weeks later.
Best known as a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Bowie performed and recorded for more than 30 years. He often incorporated a sense of theatricality into his performances by wearing a lab coat and even a chef's hat on stage, and he was described by The New York Times as "a trumpeter with a delightful vocabulary of smears, squawks, half-valve mutterings and other essentially vocal effects."
Bowie was born in Frederick, Maryland on October 11, 1941 and was raised in St. Louis, Missouri. His Father was a music teacher who played trumpet and started his son on the instrument when he was five. Lester progressed from playing at religious meetings and school festivals to blues bands, working with Little Milton, Albert King, Oliver Sain and others.
When Bowie moved to Chicago in 1965 to become musical director for singer Fontella Bass, he met some of the musicians who would later form the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). By 1969 Bowie, Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman and Malachi Favors started playing together as the Art Ensemble of Chicago. As Bowie recollected, the group rehearsed about 300 times a year in Chicago and gave only a handful of performances because there was almost nowhere to present their music. Curiosity in Europe about American experimental jazz led to extensive tours in France during their first two years, and when the group returned to the United States they began recording for Atlantic Records. The quartet was joined on subsequent albums by percussionist Famoudou Don Moye. By the mid-70's the Art Ensemble had an easier time reaching audiences and the group soon came to define an esthetic involving ethnic music, humor, eclecticism and physical intensity that had a considerable impact.
Bowie was also involved in projects of his own including a quintet and a gospel group "From the Root to the Source", a 59-piece band called the Sho Nuff Orchestra, his octet Brass Fantasy, and the Hip-Hop Feel Harmonic, an unrecorded project with rappers and musicians in his Brooklyn neighborhood of Fort Greene.
Bowie is survived by his wife, Deborah: his father, W. Lester Bowie Sr., his brothers Byron and Joseph, all of Frederick, Maryland; six children, Larry Stevenson of Sardinia, Italy; Ju'lene Coney and Nueka Mitchell of St. Louis; Sukari Ivester of Chicago; Bahnamous Bowie of Queens, Zola Bowie of Brooklyn, and 10 grandchildren.
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