Results for "composer/conductor"

Gerald Wilson

Born: September 4, 1918

Back in 1939, Gerald Wilson joined the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra as a trumpet soloist and an arranger. 66 years later, Wilson is still very active, having long been considered one of the top arrangers, composers and big band leaders in the history of jazz. 86 as of this writing, he has lost none of his enthusiasm, skills or creativity, and still manages to sound quite modern. Throughout his career, Gerald Wilson has received incredible acclaim, including winning the Downbeat International Critics Poll both as a composer/arranger and for his big band, and winning the Paul Robeson Award, the NEA American Jazz Masters Fellowship, and a pair of American Jazz Awards

Paul Whiteman

Born: March 28, 1890

Paul Whiteman's Orchestra was the most popular band of the 1920s. They are also the most controversial to Jazz historians because Whiteman billed himself as "The King Of Jazz". The Paul Whiteman Orchestra rarely played what is considered real Jazz today, despite having some of the great White Jazz soloists of the 1920s in his band. For the most part Whiteman played commercial dance music and semi-classical works. Jazz critics almost universally dislike his music, but he had his moments. Whiteman started as classical viola player. He played with the San Francisco Symphony and he led a band for the Navy during World War One

Mike Westbrook

Born: March 21, 1936

Born in High Wycombe in 1936, Mike Westbrook grew up in Torquay and was educated at Kelly College, Tavistock. He formed his first band while studying painting in Plymouth in 1958, moving to London in the early 1960s. He has led and composed for a succession of groups, notably his 1960s Sextet and Concert Band, his Brass Band, formed in the mid 70s, the jazz rock group Solid Gold Cadillac and the Mike Westbrook Orchestra. He has toured extensively throughout Europe, and as far afield as Australia and the Far East, Canada and New York. He has directed performances of his work with big bands in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland and Australia

Ruben Rada

Born: July 16, 1943

Ruben 'Negro' Rada more than almost any of his contemporaries for decades has worked as a devoted cross-genre pioneer. Rubén Rada is born in 1943 in Montevideo’s Palermo quarter. He grows up as a fan of the Beatles, Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong and Carlos Gardel. Embarking on his musical career in 1965 with the band El Kinto Conjunto, Rada becomes the first to combine Western rock music with Latin elements and to incorporate elements of jazz, funk, soul, tango and pop in his songs. But even in these early years, his ambitions and his achievements run deeper. From the beginning, he integrates Uruguay’s national genre, candombe, in his musical creations

Louis Prima

Born: December 7, 1910

Best remembered for his risque Vegas act of the 1950s, Louis Prima was the ultimate showman. Loud, boisterous, and completely out front, his mix of rhythm and blues, big band music, Italian novelty tunes, and Dixieland made him one of the hottest performers of his era.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Prima studied violin as a child. He took up the trumpet at age fourteen after his brother, who was also a musician, went on tour and left behind an old instrument. Prima taught himself how to play and in the late 1920s began to perform professionally, influenced by Louis Armstrong and the rich jazz heritage of his hometown.

Perez Prado

Born: December 11, 1916

“The Mambo King” The word mambo comes from the nañigo dialect spoken in Cuba. It probably has no real meaning, but occurs in the phrase "abrecuto y guiri mambo" ("open your eyes and listen") used to open Cuban song contests. In the Bantu language of West Africa, mambo means "conversation with the gods" and in nearby Haiti, a Mambo is a voodoo priestess. The mambo as we know it today is actually a rhythm whose tempo may be slow or fast, and almost any standard tune can be set to its tempo. The saxophone usually sets the rhythm pattern and the brass carries the melody

Cole Porter

Born: June 9, 1891

WHILE the 1920's ended on December 30, 1929--and a far different political, social, and sociological climate prevailed during the ensuing decade--a number of highly gifted writers managed to keep alive in the musical theater of the 1930's some of the feverish spirit and the unconventional attitudes of the "roaring Twenties." The most significant of these was Cole Porter. In his lyrics and melodies--for like Irving Berlin he wrote both--he fixed the smartness and cynicism, the freedom in sex attitudes, the lack of inhibitions in speech and behavior, and the outright iconoclasm that had characterized the 1920's

Harry Partch

Born: June 24, 1901

Harry Partch (1901-1974), one of the greatest and most individualistic composers of all time, was not only a great composer, but an innovative theorist who broke through the shackles of many centuries of one tuning system for all of Western music, a music instrument inventor who created dozens of incredible instruments for the performance of his music, and a musical dramatist who created his own texts and dance/theatre extravaganzas based on everything from Greek mythology to his own experiences as a hobo. Between 1930 and 1972, he created one of the most amazing bodies of sensually alluring and emotionally powerful music of the 20th century: music dramas, dance theater, multi-media extravaganzas, vocal music and chamber music---mostly all performed on the instruments he built himself. With parents who were former missionaries to China, living in isolated areas of the American southwest, Partch, as a child, was exposed to a variety of influences from Asian to Native American

Marty Paich

Born: January 23, 1925

One of the best-known arrangers of the post-World War II era, Marty Paich had much stronger jazz credentials than many of his peers, thanks to his active presence on the West Coast scene during the '50s. Paich was born in Oakland, CA, on January 23, 1925; he started out as a pianist, and was performing professionally at age 16. Along with the up-and-coming Pete Rugolo, he wrote arrangements for local bandleader Gary Nottingham. Tapped for military service in 1943, he continued to arrange while serving as the leader of the Army Air Corps band through 1946. Following his discharge, he used the G.I

Chuck Owen

The recipient of five individual GRAMMY nominations as well as a prestigious 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, Chuck Owen’s compositions have been performed throughout the world; by the Netherlands’ Metropole Orch., WDR Big Band, Brussels Jazz Orch., Aarhus Big Band, Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orch., Tonight Show Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, and numerous others.  

However, since 1995, Owen’s primary creative outlet has been his own 19-piece Jazz Surge.  Serving as conductor as well as primary composer/arranger, he has produced each of the Surge’s 7 highly feted CDs.  Whispers On the Wind, released in 2017, was recognized with 4 GRAMMY Nominations (including for best composition) while also named #1 Big Band Album in the annual Jazz Station Awards.  River Runs (2013), a stunning 5-movement genre-bending orchestral/big band hybrid and The Comet’s Tail (2009) also received GRAMMY nominations.