Spencer Davis, of the Spencer Davis Group.
Mr. Davis co-wrote “Gimme Some Lovin’,” his group’s biggest hit. He played rhythm guitar in the band and occasionally sang lead vocals, lending his baritone voice mostly to blues-oriented material.
But it was Mr. Winwood, who was only 15 when Mr. Davis discovered him, who emerged as the group’s star, singing lead on its hit singles and later becoming an essential figure in British rock through his work with the bands Traffic and Blind Faith and in a long solo career.
After Mr. Winwood abruptly left the Spencer Davis Group in 1967 to form Traffic, Mr. Davis kept the band going through multiple incarnations. In 1968, a new iteration of the Spencer Davis Group enjoyed two Top 40 hits in Britain, “Time Seller” and “Mr. Second Class.”
The band did not have similar success in the United States, but a song co-written by Mr. Davis and recorded by the band that year, “Don’t Want You No More,” became significant in 1969 when the Allman Brothers recorded a cover version as the opening track on their debut album.
Jon Gibson, minimalist saxophonist.
…best known as a member of the Philip Glass Ensemble from its founding in 1968 until last year. He participated in the first performances of watershed Glass works like “Music in Twelve Parts” and “Einstein on the Beach” and performed with Mr. Glass around the world until health problems prompted his departure in 2019. His mastery of circular breathing and other techniques made him a crucial asset to the development of Mr. Glass’s sound.
“His technical abilities were beyond what anyone else was able to do,” Mr. Glass said in a phone interview, “and he brought everyone else around him up to his level. He was very gentle with everyone, and very generous.” Without Mr. Gibson, Mr. Glass added, “the music wouldn’t have grown in a certain way that it could grow.”
Mr. Gibson collaborated as well with the other three composers now recognized for establishing Minimalist music in the United States: He participated in the world premieres of Terry Riley’s “In C” and Steve Reich’s “Drumming,” and he was briefly a member of La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music. An inveterate and eager collaborator, Mr. Gibson also worked with composers who had little or no connection to Minimalism, including Christian Wolff, Robert Ashley and Annea Lockwood.
As a composer, he pursued a panoramic span of disciplines, from unaccompanied saxophone performance and tape collage to fully staged opera. His most ambitious creations include “Voyage of the Beagle,” a music theater piece about Charles Darwin, which Mr. Gibson created with the director JoAnne Akalaitis from 1983 to 1987; and “Violet Fire,” an opera about the inventor Nikola Tesla, which was introduced in Belgrade in 2006 and staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music the same year.