An underrated jazz guitarist (and a custom instrument-builder), Attila Zoller was from Hungary. He started playing jazz in Budapest after WW2. After picking up his chops he went to Austria in '48 and then Germany in '54, where he played with notables Jutta Hipp and Albert Mangelsdorff. He backed several visiting American jazz musicians and in '59 won a scholarship to the Lenox School of Jazz in Western Massachusetts.
While at Lenox he was roommates with iconoclasts Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. He worked with Benny Goodman, Herbie Mann and Chico Hamilton, as well as cutting music for films before forming his own avant-garde group in '65. He put himself together a nice international career playing with Oscar Pettiford, Jimi Hendrix, Herbie Hancock, Cal Tjader, Lee Konitz and others. In 1985 he founded the Vermont Jazz Center, an institution in New England jazz and a place I have been to many, many times. Indeed, the Center has continued to thrive long after Zoller's passing.