Jeremy Steig

Jeremy Steig was an American jazz flutist.

Steig was born in Manhattan, the son of New Yorker cartoonist William Steig and Elizabeth (Mead) Steig, head of the fine arts department at Lesley College. Steig was a maternal nephew of Margaret Mead and Leo Rosten, and was also the cousin of Mary Catherine Bateson. Steig himself worked as an artist and graphic designer. At age 19 Steig was involved in a motorcycle accident which left him paralyzed on one side. For some years afterward, he played the flute with the help of a special mouthpiece. After a start in mainstream jazz, with albums with Bill Evans and Denny Zeitlin, Steig became an early force in the jazz-rock fusion experiments of the late 1960s and early 70s, including the short lived band Jeremy and the Satyrs, featuring Warren Bernhardt, Eddie Gómez and Adrian Guillary. Steig's album Energy, later re-released with additional material under different titles, featured keyboard player Jan Hammer and bassist Eddie Gómez, and was recorded at Electric Lady Studios under the hand of sometime Jimi Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer. Additionally, Steig played flute on the seminal Peter Walker record "Rainy Day Raga", providing an atmospheric color essential to the records fusion of Eastern Indian and Americana Folk traditions. Steig addressed the tonal color restrictions of the instrument by the use of "modern" acoustic techniques (voice multiphonics and overtones similar to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, key percussion) electronic effects, and by using the entire battery of flute-family instruments, from piccolo to bass flute (including the obscure Sousa-era alto piccolo), often over-dubbed and multi-tracked together. His song "Howlin' For Judy", from his 1970 album Legwork, was sampled in the Beastie Boys' 1994 single "Sure Shot", providing the main instrumental part of the song. Steig played with the Plastic Ono Band Steig performed the role of "The Pied Piper," exclusively on flute, in the film Shrek Forever After, based on the character created by his father. He lived in Japan with his wife Asako. He died in Yokohama from cancer on April 13, 2016.