found: Washington post WWW site, viewed Feb. 27, 2019(Ira Gitler, who turned his childhood obsession with jazz into a career as a major behind-the-scenes figure, as a critic, magazine editor, record producer and historian who documented the rise of modern jazz, died Feb. 23 [2019] in Manhattan. He was 90. Mr. Gitler began writing about jazz while in high school in New York and later became a fixture at Prestige Records, where he helped produce albums by Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and the Modern Jazz Quartet. At various times, he was the New York editor of DownBeat magazine, a jazz concert producer, and a professor at several colleges. Throughout his life, Mr. Gitler had a parallel career as a leading authority on ice hockey. He wrote several books on the sport, contributed articles frequently to the New York Rangers program and was a co-author of a 1969 history, "Hockey! The Story of the World's Fastest Sport." Mr. Gitler was an amateur hockey player and coach into his 70s. His team, Gitler's Gorillas, won many championships in a New York amateur league and was featured in the New Yorker magazine. Ira Gitler was born Dec. 18, 1928, in Brooklyn. He taught jazz history at New York's City College, the Mannes School of Music and, for 20 years, at the Manhattan School of Music)