Results for "The Metropolitan Jazz Octet"

Metropolitan Jazz Octet

Active since: 2014

The Metropolitan Jazz Octet (MJO) is the reawakening of a group that started in the 1950’s by Chicago saxophonist and arranger Tom Hilliard. 

From 1950 through mid-'80s Hilliard wrote many of the octets compositions. He worked with Chicago’s top arrangers and studio musicians expanding the library to 150-plus charts. In 1959 MJO recorded an album on the Argo label called “The Legend of Bix,” a tribute to 1920's great cornetist and composer Bix Beiderbecke. 

As a professor at De Paul University School of Music, Hilliard taught three current members of MJO to whom he bequeathed his complete library, passing the torch to the next generation.