Canadian horn player Guido Basso, a Juno Award winner, member of the Order of Canada and a founding member of the jazz band Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass, has died. Basso was also involved with a number of CBC programs in the 1960s and ’70s, including the variety show Nightcap and Mallets and Brass.

A talented flugelhornist and trumpeter, Basso remained active in the jazz scene, playing concerts as recently as last year. He passed away peacefully at home, according to an Instagram post from his wife, Kristin Basso.

“My heart is broken,” she wrote on Monday.

Basso’s playing inspired trumpeter and University of Toronto associate professor Chase Sanborn to move to Toronto in the 1980s.

“You met him once and you understood how warm he was. And then that comes through in his music exactly the same way,” he said.

“More than anybody I’ve ever known, it was just like a human voice is playing.”

Sanborn says Basso is an unsung hero in the world of jazz.

“People who know him, love him.”

Born in Montreal in 1937, Basso studied at the Quebec Conservatory of Music in Montreal. In a 2016 interview with noted jazz man Bill King, Basso said he started his first quartet at age 11.

“There was a restaurant called St. Hubert Spaghetti House. We used to go out there and play Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays three hours a night,” he said.

“The budget was killing the establishment so they fired us. So we said we’d play for free food so we went back and did that, then they said ‘No — let’s go back to $1 an hour,’ because we were eating them out of stock.”

Basso joined a dance band at age 13, and ended up in Toronto in 1960. He was the musical director on CBC’s Nightcap, which ran from 1963-67. He later co-hosted Mallets and Brass with Peter Appleyard, was musical director for CBC Radio’s After Noon and worked on the CBC-TV series In The Mood and Bandwagon.

Rest in peace, Guido Basso – friend and pillar of the Jazz community. The brilliance you brought to this world through music and spirit will live on forever.<br><br>(Thanks for the additional photo memories, <a href=”https://twitter.com/geokollermusic?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@geokollermusic</a>.)<a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/GuidoBasso?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#GuidoBasso</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Canadian?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#Canadian</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Jazz?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#Jazz</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/legend?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#legend</a> <a href=”https://t.co/lXB8aVWG7y”>pic.twitter.com/lXB8aVWG7y</a>

—@lailabiali

In 1968 he was a founding member of Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass, a 16-piece band made up of Toronto’s leading studio musicians.

“It was the only Canadian jazz band that could cross the border and play the living daylights out of U.S. musicians,” Basso told CBC News in 2010.

Basso was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1994. He won the Juno for best traditional jazz album in 2004 for his Lost In The Stars.