The American musician passed away on Sunday (21Jun15) at a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts after suffering complications from leukaemia.

Schuller is best known for coining the term 'third stream' to describe music which fuses jazz and classical techniques, and for winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his orchestral work Of Reminiscences and Reflections.

He began his professional career aged 15 as a French horn player with the American Ballet Theatre before moving onto the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York. He also played alongside Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Johnny Mathis on jazz recordings.

Schuller wrote more than 200 compositions during his career, and as a conductor, he won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance with the New England Conservatory in 1974. He picked up another Grammy for Best Album Notes in 1976.