Someone sent me this today, very sad news. A list of his students down through the years would fill dozens of pages here. He's been at this a very long time. I wish I could say I had the benefit of his encyclopedic knowledge. Many friends from back East have told me stories about him.
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This notice came from pianoworld:

Dear students and friends, As some of you recall, at the beginning of November Charlie developed symptoms that appeared to be a cold. While treating those symptoms, it was then discovered it was not a cold, it was pneumonia. While treating the pneumonia it was unfortunately discovered that he had a very aggressive form of cancer. No one knew - not Charlie or his family, or even the doctors at first. Charlie will start aggressive treatment immediately with one of the best doctors in the world. As you all know Charlie, he is very concerned with his students' progress and he talks about it constantly. So hopefully he can get through this situation and start teaching again as soon as possible. So we ask for you to remain on stand-by --- except for NEC and Longy students who need to be re-assigned to another teacher to fulfill the timely demands of your degree program. Charlie or his family will notify everyone when and if it's conquered. In the meantime, he hopes that you will continue to do what you've always done which is work very hard at your music. Charlie and his family are requesting no visitors at this time. We have to put all our energy into battling the cancer. You can send him your messages and prayers using his email address charliebanacos@​gmail.​com or you can send mail to: Charlie Banacos P.O. Box 272 Manchester, MA 01944. Please don't use voicemail. We can't keep up! As a family we are shocked and deeply saddened to tell you this news. But right now it is comforting to know that Charlie is accepting it with his usual quirky sense of humor (if that's what you want to call it!) Hopefully he will get back to teaching very soon. He really misses all of you. We will send you updates from time to time. Sincerely, The Banacos family

And his way of dealing with it:

Hi Everybody, Just a short note to let you know everything's cool. All of your messages are so great and are helping me and my family cope with all this. First I thought I had a cold, but no! It's pneumonia! Then, while treating the pneumonia they find out I have an aggressive form of cancer. So I'm being treated for that with some of the greatest doctors in the world. So basically that's the story. I also just wanted to mention a couple of things that might help somebody else. As you do things through life you'll learn a lot of things and some of them never really get tested. In other words, it's all just theory unless it actually gets tested against something. So I've been testing certain things and I wanted you to know the results of some of the tests. I've studied meditation and breathing exercises for example from a young age and I noticed that when I have tests here in the hospital there are certain breathing techniques that do help you overcome the pain more than others. So you might want to try learning some techniques like this, and hopefully you'll never have to go through anything like this, but it's good to have them in your 'arsenal'. Another great way to practice when you can't move around too much is figure out the chord or chords that you hear in the hospital and use that to practice different sonorities. I'll give you an example of what's happening right now: most of the electronic sounds of this hospital at this moment are B's, D#'s, F#'s and A-naturals. Now there are other sounds, but those are the pre-dominant sounds coming from the electronic equipment (and people yelling "Code Red!!!" Just kidding...) So you could say right at this moment I'm swimming around in a pool of Bdom7. If you use that as a basis, the next time you hear somebody yell "code" you can practice and name its function against the B7 chord as quickly as possible and it makes a type of symphony. For example, let's say someone says "saline" and you notice that they said it on E and G, you would say to yourself "sa" is 4 and "line" is flat-6. Let's say you hear a nurse say "stat" and it just happens to be an F, you might say "Oh, that was #4 (or flat-5)". This way you can do this all day long and have a mini symphony going on. I hope you never have to use this kind of exercise in this type of situation, but it works everywhere - in diners, supermarkets, etc. So try it and you might have fun playing that game. Once again thank you for the really great messages. And I really feel bad that I can't be giving you lessons right at this time. I'm using this time as much as possible to prepare things that my family can help me with to pass on information. One of my daughters, Barbara, has been especially helpful on the music end of things, as she is a great classical pianist and just started to get into the jazz 'thing' recently. She's the one who's actually taking this dictation for me and just mentioned that we should pretend we're just around a camp-fire instead of in a hospital room. Maybe my positive-​thinking and imagery here in the hospital is influencing her just a little too much - huh? [Gee, thanks Dad! ha!] God bless you! Hope to see you soon! Charlie

This is terrible news. I've played with enough of his students to fill a few pages.

I was a long time student and then friend of Charlie and his impact on music instruction, theory and jazz as a whole is legendary.

He is one of a kind and his presence is heard in so much of today's jazz scene.

Wow, is all I can say.