The life and spirit of Gary Hassay, an improvisational jazz musician, will be celebrated in concert, 7:30 p.m. Nov. 22, Egner Chapel, Muhlenberg College, 2400 Chew St., Allentown.

Performing will be Hassay’s music collaborators Ellen Christi, Tracy Lisk, William Parker and Steve Swell. Throat singer Robert McLaughlin will also perform.

The concert is free and open to the public. Donations at the door will be accepted for the performers.

Gary Joseph Hassay, saxophonist, improviser and founding member of improvisationalmusicco, inc. (improvco), a not-for-profit presenting organization in Allentown, died Sept. 13 in St. Luke’s Hospice, Bethlehem. He was 77.

For more than 35 years, Hassay, playing alto and tenor saxophones and, later, performing Tibetan throat-singing, played with dozens of musicians at Lehigh Valley venues and in Philadelphia and New York, often incorporating dancers and painters in his performances.

His output includes more than 20 albums, one of them Grammy-nominated, with collaborators such as Dave Burrell, Dave Liebman, Tracy Lisk, Tatsuya Nakatani and William Parker.

Improvco, founded in 1979, produced more than 130 concerts featuring jazz and improvising musicians from around the world, and for more than two decades was an essential concert stop and the anchor of a thriving alternative arts and music scene in the Lehigh Valley.

The list of Europeans who graced improvco stages included AMM, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink, Peter Brötzmann, Willem Breuker, Evan Parker, Irene Schweizer and John Tchicai, along with Americans Marilyn Crispell, Fred Frith, Shelley Hirsch, Butch Morris, Leo Smith, Sun Ra Arkestra, Cecil Taylor, Randy Weston, World Saxophone Quartet and John Zorn.

Hassay established improvco at Egads!, a Gallery for the Arts, Eighth and Linden streets, Allentown.

In addition to performances by Hassay’s own Dr. Vincent Sakeeda and the Attack Ensemble, concerts at Egads! included those by artist Greg Weaver of Allentown, The Stick Men punk band of Philadelphia and European free jazz saxophonist-clarinetist Peter Brötzmann of Germany, whose Egads! concert was released as an album.

“Gary’s performances, in collaboration with many well-known improvisational jazz musicians, were one-of-kind, memorable and stunning. Gary was the avant-garde of the avant-garde in improvisational jazz,” said Paul Willistein, a founder with Steve Brosky, of Egads!.

“Gary helped make Allentown, and the rest of the Valley, a magnetic meeting ground for improv-free jazz from around the globe,” said Geoff Gehman, arts writer for The Morning Call from 1984 to 2009.

Gary Joseph Hassay was born on Nov. 10, 1947, the only son of Joseph Hassay, a tool-maker at Bethlehem Steel Corp. and a gypsy-style violinist, who encouraged him to study music, and Betty (Mickley) Hassay, a secretary and bookkeeper.

Gary Hassay was a Vietnam veteran, serving in the Navy and graduating from Livingston College at Rutgers University in 1972. For many years, he was director of technical services for Computer Parts U.S., and a free-lance computer expert.

In 1984, he married Pamela Fearing, an artist and arts administrator and director of The Open Space gallery, Allentown, site of many improvco concerts. She was an integral part of the Lehigh Valley arts and music scene for more than three decades. Pamela Fearing Hassay died in 2016.

“When you play improvisational music, you have to let what comes out come out,” said Hassay in a 2003 Morning Call article.

“You learn something about yourself. There’s a big difference between what you think you want and know and what you really want and really know,” said Hassay.

Said Gehman. “Hassay led a band of devoted allies, including his hostess-chef wife Pamela, with humility, a steel will, wizardly computer skills, a unique wisecracking, wiseacre personality and a saxophone that managed to be tuned in even when it wasn’t particularly tuneful.”

“The main thing Gary wanted to get across was how music took him up the right path, leading him to seek beauty while running the spectrum of jazz, free and otherwise,” Gehman said, adding, “Thanks to him, many sonic and social envelopes were opened, along with countless minds and horizons.”