Brother Ah heard the music in everything

Brother Ah spoke in a voice warmer than sunlight, and if you made a habit of tuning into “The Collectors,” the jazz veteran’s weekly program on WPFW (89.3 FM), you learned how to hear the music between the songs.

His guiding philosophy was something he called “sound awareness” — the idea that we can better understand life by listening for music in every sound we encounter. Sure, Brother Ah had played with Thelonious Monk and Sun Ra, recorded with John Coltrane and Gil Evans, but he said he learned the most profound musical lessons of his life from children and birdsong, echoes and the wind.