Results for "Arranger"

Bill Finegan

Born: April 3, 1917

Bill Finegan, an architect of the big band sounds of Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller later traded in commercial success to co-create the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, which produced music that still stands as some of the most experimental of the swing era. In 1938, Dorsey bought Finegan's score for "Lonesome Road" and played it for Miller, who offered the young arranger a job. Between 1938 and 1942 Finegan wrote more than 300 arrangements for Miller, including some of the band's biggest hits: the classic "Little Brown Jug," "Sunrise Serenade" and "Song of the Volga." Finegan also wrote arrangements for the films "Sun Valley Serenade" in 1941 and "Orchestra Wives" in 1942, and had begun a lifelong profession as a teacher

Nelson Riddle

Born: June 1, 1921

Nelson Riddle - arranger (1921 - 1985) Nelson Riddle was one of the greatest arrangers in the history of American popular music. He worked with many of the major pop vocalists of his day, but it was his immortal work with Frank Sinatra, particularly on the singer’s justly revered Capitol concept albums, that cemented his enduring legacy. He was a master of mood and subtlety, and an expert at drawing out a song’s emotional subtext. He was highly versatile in terms of style, mood and tempo, and packed his charts full of rhythmic and melodic variations and rich tonal colors that blended seamlessly behind the lead vocal line

Ernie Wilkins

Born: July 20, 1922

Ernest Brooks Wilkins Jr. was a jazz arranger and writer who also played tenor saxophone. He might be best known for his work with Count Basie. He also wrote for Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, and Dizzy Gillespie. In addition to that he was musical director for albums by Cannonball Adderley, Dinah Washington, Oscar Peterson, and Buddy Rich.

In his early career he had played in a military band before joining Earl Hines's last big band. In 1951 he began working with Basie. After 1955 he went free-lance as a jazz arranger and writer of songs as he was much in demand at that time. His success declined in the 1960s, but revived after work with Clark Terry

Steve Weisberg

Steve Weisberg, born 1963 in Norfolk, Virginia, is a composer/arranger/pianist and internationalrecording artist/producer. In the 80's, after studying with Michael Gibbs at Berklee College in Boston,Ma., he recorded the XtraWatt/ECM release "I Can't Stand Another Night Alone (in bed with you)"produced by Carla Bley and Steve Swallow, recorded and performed with Karen Mantler and her CatArnold, contributed arrangements for Hal Willner's "Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill" (A&M).Through the end of the 80's and into the 90's, he performed in and around New York City with theprestigious Steve Weisberg and his Orchestra, a 13 piece ensemble consisting of New York's finest jazzluminaries and trend setters.

Don Redman

Born: July 29, 1900

Don Redman is considered the first jazz composer/arranger by many. He was also the first musician with both the inspiration and academic knowledge for this style of music. In short, he invented jazz writing for the big band, not only writing separate parts for reed and brass "choirs", leaving room for hot solos, but putting sections in opposition which solved the problems of the new style, thus showing everyone else how to do it. His brother led a band in Cumberland, Maryland and his father was a noted music teacher and had performed in a brass band. His mother was a singer. Don began playing the trumpet at the age of three, joined his first band at 6 and by the age of 12 was proficient on all wind instruments including the oboe

Sy Oliver

Born: December 17, 1910

Melvin James (Sy) Oliver,was one of America's great jazz composers and arrangers of the big band era, and a musician who had a significant impact on American popular music. Sy Oliver was born in Battle Creek, Mich., on Dec. 10, 1910. His parents were music teachers, and his father was also a concert singer. As a trumpeter in high school, Oliver played with Cliff Barnett's Club Royal Serenaders. and at age 17, he moved up to the more prestigious territory bands, working with Zack Whyte and his Chocolate Beau Brummels, where he began to hone his arranging skills, and with Alphonso Trent's band, which was based in Cincinnati. Oliver joined the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra in late 1933, and in the six years until he left, his composing and arranging made the group one of the most successful and individual big bands of the swing era

Johnny Mandel

Born: November 23, 1925

The eventful career of Johnny Mandel is grounded by a thorough background in music that has resulted in his being acclaimed in the pantheon of American composers, arrangers, record producers and songwriters. His is a career that has had both duration and substance and continues to flourish. He was born in New York City. At the age of 12, he was playing the trumpet and beginning to write big band arrangements. After graduating from New York Military Academy, where he had received a band scholarship, he immediately went on the road working in the Catskill Mountains at various resort hotels. He then joined the orchestra of the legendary violinist Joe Venuti

Fletcher Henderson

Born: December 18, 1897

The bands Fletcher Henderson led in the 1920s and 1930s were vitally significant incubators of new developments in jazz. Henderson played a key role in bringing improvisatory jazz styles from New Orleans and other areas of the country to New York, where they merged with a dance-band tradition that relied heavily on arrangements written out in musical notation. The new music that developed at Henderson's hands and under his mentorship allowed the composer's art to flourish, yet left room for the improvisatory talents of individual jazz soloists—striking a balance that has influenced jazz ever since. Born in Cuthbert, Georgia, on December 18, 1897, James Fletcher Henderson enjoyed the best education available, his father was a teacher and a school principal, and both his parents played the piano

W.C. Handy

Born: November 16, 1873

William Christopher Handy, known as “the father of the blues,” was the first person to notate and publish blues songs, and is recognized for integrating blues elements into ragtime, which was a seminal form of jazz, changing the course of popular music. He wrote over 60 blues, spirituals, and popular tunes, including the perennial blues standard St. Louis Blues. W.C. Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, November 16, 1873, the son of former slaves. His first instrument was the coronet, and he advanced from lessons in a barbershop to studying classical music. While still a teenager Handy began teaching school but left for better paying work in a factory

Tadd Dameron

Born: February 21, 1917

Tadd Dameron as a composer and arranger was the man who in the 1940s and ‘50s was among the first to use the sometimes raw and undisciplined devices of the then- new style of jazz called bebop in well-developed arrangements for big bands and small groups. Perhaps more than any other musician, Dameron added form to the then-emerging style of bop. Born in Cleveland in 1917, Dameron grew up with music all around him, his mother first taught him to play piano, "not to read, but by memory." But, it was Dameron’s older brother, Caesar, a saxophonist, who got his brother interested in jazz by listening to the records of the big bands of the 1930’s like Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and the Casa Loma band that was playing unique arrangements at the time. Cleveland jazz musician Andy Anderson said he first heard Dameron in the 1930s when Caesar brought his kid brother to a nightclub, and asked if the boy could sit in with the Snake White Band