Bill Russo: Ground-breaking Composer and Arranger

Bill Russo was one of the most important composers and arrangers in jazz history. He contributed some of the most innovative orchestral scores ever written in a jazz idiom to the Stan Kenton Orchestra in the Fifties, and later founded important jazz orchestras in London and Chicago.

He was born William Joseph Russo, and attended the same Chicago high school as saxophonist Lee Konitz (later a band mate in the Kenton group). Like Konitz, he studied with pianist and jazz pedagogue Lennie Tristano in the mid-Forties, and carried forward his progressive thinking into his own work.

He played trombone in dance and jazz bands, and began writing and arranging while still in his early teens. He formed his own rehearsal band while a student, under the appropriate name of Experiment in Jazz (1947-50).

His work came to the attention of Stan Kenton, who engaged him as a trombonist, composer and arranger in 1950. He remained with the band until 1954, and wrote many famous pieces for Kenton