{"id":18510,"date":"2026-05-23T12:38:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/celebrating-the-life-and-music-of-ken-peplowski-lee-mergner-substack\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T12:38:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:38:22","slug":"celebrating-the-life-and-music-of-ken-peplowski-lee-mergner-substack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/celebrating-the-life-and-music-of-ken-peplowski-lee-mergner-substack\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating the Life and Music of Ken Peplowski – Lee Mergner | Substack"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today would have been Ken Peplowski\u2019s 67th birthday, so I\u2019m sharing this piece about the memorial service for him that was held earlier this week in New York City.<\/strong>
On Tuesday, May 19, roughly 500 members of the jazz community came together in Saint Peter\u2019s Church in NYC to celebrate the life and music of my friend (and a friend to so many) Ken Peplowski, who died earlier this year on Feb. 2, the last day of The Jazz Cruise. Saint Peter\u2019s is renowned as the \u201cjazz church,\u201d where many jazz greats including Miles Davis, Sheila Jordan and Roy Haynes have been feted in the past. The jazz ministry was founded there in 1968 by the Reverend John Gensel, who had befriended Duke Ellington and other legends of the music.
This particular event, which featured an even mix of remembrances and performances, was organized by Ken\u2019s friend Pamela Stark, with assists from Loren Schoenberg, David Ostwald, Mark Lopeman, Ehud Asherie and me, who all endeavored to pay proper tribute to Ken both as a musician and a man. Not that the two could be easily separated with someone as both talented and colorful as Ken. During the course of nearly a dozen remembrances, a common theme emerged: that of Ken taking the music seriously, yet not taking himself (or any of us) seriously. It seemed that just about anyone who knew Ken had stories about his self-deprecating wit, which could also be turned into a razzing weapon onstage or off.
As the emcee, Ostwald, a longtime bandleader and friend of Ken\u2019s, used short video clips of Ken to introduce the speakers and performers. I think Ken would have appreciated that David enabled him to narrate his own memorial in his own inimitable fashion. Friends who spoke movingly and often humorously about Ken included Loren, Mark, Spike Wilner, Paquito D\u2019Rivera, Dick Hyman (in absentia), and Ken\u2019s brother Ted.
<\/span>Photo of John Pizzarelli by <\/span>Steven Sussman<\/a><\/em>
Of course, the artists who performed musical numbers couldn\u2019t help but share remembrances when introducing their songs. Those songs, all exquisitely performed, included: \u201cYou Must Believe in Spring\u201d by Tierney Sutton and Shelly Berg; \u201cWhen You Wish Upon a Star\u201d by Glenn Zaleski, Martin Wind, Terell Stafford and Wycliffe Gordon; \u201cHere Comes the Sun\u201d by John Pizzarelli, Madelyn Pizzarelli and Jessica Molasky; \u201cWhy Try to Change Me Now?\u201d by Katie Thiroux and Matt Wilson; and \u201cThe One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else\u201d by Catherine Russell and Ehud Asherie. Guitarist James Chirillo closed the event with a solo version of \u201cUnder the Rainbow.\u201d
David did his best to keep the trains running on time, but of course folks went long, more with the remembrances than the music. In addition to all the talk and music, we showed a 9 \u00bd minute slideshow of photos spanning his whole life, mostly through images of him with other people, rather than solo shots of him playing. I put that together drawing from more than 200 photos supplied by dozens of his friends and family. There were many that produced that \u201caw\u201d reaction, but my favorite is of one of his early bands, which looked to be sort of a Blood Sweat & Tears inspired outfit, whose \u201cpublicity shot\u201d was clearly taken in a men\u2019s room, with two urinals directly to the right of the bandmembers.
You can watch the entire photo slideshow here:
Many jazz fans would be surprised to know, given Ken\u2019s stature in the mainstream jazz world, that he was a dedicated fan of both the Beatles and Elvis Presley, perhaps the latter with a bit of irony. Or not. The service ended with two clips of Ken performing Elvis\u2019s \u201cLove Me Tender,\u201d 40 years apart, one as a vocalist and the other on his favored instrument of the clarinet. Seeing a clip of a young Ken doing an Elvis impersonation for a Christmas Eve gig along with friends like Chirillo and Vignola was priceless. Then a video of his performance later with a heartfelt instrumental along with John Pizzarelli provided a touching coda to a very powerful event. You can see for yourself and watch a copy of the livestream on the Saint Peter\u2019s Church YouTube channel here:
It seemed as though just about everyone who knew Ken had stories about his wit, warmth and talent, so a <\/span>Legacy.com page<\/a> was created to enable friends and family to share their Ken stories. I myself have many. How about this one? Onstage during a set on The Jazz Cruise, he announced, \u201cI\u2019m so glad my agent is sailing with us this week. In fact, he\u2019s backstage eating 15% of my chicken.\u201d<\/span>
As has been documented elsewhere, Ken had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2021 and, over the next five years, he dealt with that illness as bravely as could be imagined. Ken asked that in lieu of flowers in his memory, people donate to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation <\/span>here.<\/a>
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Today would have been Ken Peplowski\u2019s 67th birthday, so I\u2019m sharing this piece about the memorial service for him that was held earlier this week in New York City.On Tuesday, May 19, roughly 500 members of the jazz community came together in Saint Peter\u2019s Church in NYC to celebrate the life and music of my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}