Get the latest gossip

James Chance, No Wave Icon & the Contortions Saxophonist, Dies at 71

James Chance, the singer-saxophonist of the Contortions, who helped launch the No Wave scene in the late 1970s, has died. He was 71.

Born James Alan Siegfried in Milwaukee, Chance began playing piano while attending a Catholic elementary school and later took up the alto saxophone in his late teenage years. During his education at Michigan State University and Milwaukee’s Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, he formed the jazz band James Siegfried Quintet and the Stooges-influenced Death. In 1975, Chance moved to New York, where he officially began using his stage name, and a year later formed the influential group Teenage Jesus and the Jerks with singer Lydia Lunch.

Get the Android app