Claire Daly
02.25.2025
02.26.1958 – 10.22.2024
CLAIRE ANN DALY had a standout life and career as an award-winning artist, entertainer, educator, and “hands-on friend.” Claire was introduced to the jazz genre by her first hero, her father Patrick, with tickets to hear the Buddy Rich Orchestra at the Westchester County Center. At age twelve, Claire found her vocation and never looked back. “I was standing on my chair screaming,” she remembered in Making the Scene: Contemporary New York City Big Band Jazz. “I had been playing saxophone for about three months. I said to my father, ‘I would do anything to be on that bus.’ It was the most unbelievable thing I had ever heard in my life.” Her commitment to alto sax continued through joining a local marching band and a high school band ensemble. Despite the encouragement of her teachers at Maria Regina in Hartsdale to pursue the visual arts or journalism, Claire applied to only one college: Berklee College of Music. Claire was off to Boston, leaving her all-girls’ Catholic school behind and taking to the predominantly male Berklee like a duck to water.
