Editing David Baker (composer) (section)

==Death and legacy==
Baker died on March 26, 2016, at the age of eighty-four in Bloomington from complications due to [[Parkinson's disease]] and [[Lewy body dementia]].<ref name=Buckley/><ref name=Higgins/>

In the 1960s he introduced jazz studies as academic discipline at Indiana University. It was accepted as an academic degree program in 1968, making it one of the earliest to be established in an American university. In addition to chairing IU's Jazz Studies department from 1968 to 2013, he served as musical and artistic director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra from 1991 to 2012. In these roles he became a leader and mentor to the next generation of jazz musicians.<ref name=Tamarkin-Haga/><ref name=Mansky/> His range of interests is reflected in the dozens of books and hundreds of articles he wrote, as well as the hundreds of musical compositions, including many that George Russell called "21st-century soul music."<ref name=Johnson>{{cite web| author=David Brent Johnson| title =David Baker's 21st-Century Soul Music | work =Take Five | publisher =[[NPR]] Music | date =January 19, 2012 | url=https://www.npr.org/sections/ablogsupreme/2012/01/19/145450813/david-bakers-21st-century-soul-music | access-date =July 2, 2018}}</ref>