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Idrees Sulieman was born on August 7, 1923, in St. Petersburg, Florida. He studied trumpet and music at the Boston Conservatory, and gained early experience playing with the Carolina Cotton Pickers and the wartime Earl Hines Orchestra in the early Forties.

Sulieman was closely associated with Mary Lou Williams, worked with cab Calloway, John Coltrane, Count Basie and Lionel Hampton. He recorded with Coleman Hawkins and gigged with Randy Weston in the 50s, toured with Oscar Dennard through Europe in 1961, and then settled in Stockholm, moving to Copenhagen in 1964.

A major soloist with The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Band in the mid-’60s through 1973, and frequently worked with radio orchestras. Idrees recorded as a leader for Swedish Columbia and SteepleChase, he played in the 1985 big band of Miles Davis on the album “Aura,” which was released in 1989. He worked and recorded some twenty-two albums as a leader and sideman with Teddy Charles, Mal Waldron, Lester Young, Cedar Walton, Sam Jones, Billy Higgins, Horace Parlan and Niels-Henning Orsted Pederson among others.

Hard bop trumpeter Idrees Sulieman’s career slowed down considerably in the ’90s as he aged and he died of bladder cancer on July 23, 2002 at St. Anthony’s Hospital in his hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida.

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