Jon Pareles reports in the New York Times that the musician David Bowie has died. The cause was cancer. Born in London in 1947, he first took up the saxophone in the 1960s and studied with the dancer, actor, and mime Lindsay Kemp, who fostered Bowie’s interest in theatrical movement and presentation. His first major single, “Space Oddity,” was released in Britain shortly before the Apollo 11 mission and rereleased in 1973 in the United States. His subsequent albumsHunky Dory, (1971) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1972), and Aladdin Sane, (1973) made him an international pop phenomenon and brought glam rock and androgyny to the mainstream.

After moving to the United States in 1974, he recorded the hit song “Rebel Rebel” and made his Young Americans album in Philadelphia with collaborators such as Luther Vandross and John Lennon. In 1976 he starred in Nicolas Roeg’s film The Man Who Fell to Earth, but after his Station to Station album that same year he left America for Europe, moving first to Switzerland and then West Berlin where he would begin a cycle of legendary albums in collaboration with Brian Eno that combined pop with the progressive sounds of German groups like Kraftwerk, Can, and Neu! with Eno’s development of ambient electronic music. Produced by Tony Visconti, the Berlin trilogy of Low (1977), “Heroes” (1977), and Lodger (1979), marked a definitive shift and would go on to influence the then nascent sounds of post-punk and electronic music. At the same time as he was making his own albums, Bowie also produced and wrote songs for Iggy Pop’s solo albums The Idiot (1977) and Lust for Life (1977).

In the 1980s, Bowie also moved into live theater, performing the titular role of The Elephant Man in Denver in 1980. He continued releasing albums and touring over the next decades, releasing his last album,Blackstar, on January 8, 2016, his birthday.