Edward William May Jr. was an American composer, arranger and trumpeter. He composed film and television music for The Green Hornet (1966), The Mod Squad (1968), Batman, and Naked City (1960). He collaborated on films such as Pennies from Heaven (1981), and orchestrated Cocoon, and Cocoon: The Return, among others.
Stanley Newcomb Kenton was an American popular music and jazz artist. As a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader, he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for almost four decades. Though Kenton had several pop hits from the early 1940s into the 1960s, his music was always forward-looking. Kenton was also a pioneer in the field of jazz education, creating the Stan Kenton Jazz Camp in 1959 at Indiana University.
Mike Post is an American composer, best known for his television theme music for various shows, including The White Shadow; Law & Order; Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; The A-Team; The Byrds of Paradise; NYPD Blue; Renegade;The Rockford Files; L.A. Law; Quantum Leap; Magnum, P.I.; and Hill Street Blues. He was also the producer of the Van Halen III album by the band Van Halen.
"My Funny Valentine" is a show tune from the 1937 Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart coming of age musical Babes in Arms in which it was introduced by teenaged star Mitzi Green. The song became a popular jazz standard, appearing on over 1300 albums performed by over 600 artists. One of them was Chet Baker, for whom it became his signature song. In 2015 the Gerry Mulligan quartet's 1953 version of the song was inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry for its "cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society and the nation’s audio legacy". Mulligan also recorded the song with his Concert Jazz Band in 1960.
Donald Harrison Jr. is an African-American jazz saxophonist and the Big Chief of The Congo Square Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group from New Orleans, Louisiana.
A jazz funeral is a funeral procession accompanied by a brass band, in the tradition of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Alberto Naranjo [nah-rahn'-ho] was a Venezuelan musician. His mother, the singer Graciela Naranjo, was a radio, film and television pioneer in her homeland. Largely self-taught, Naranjo embarked on a similar musical course, becoming – like his mother – one of Venezuela's icons of contemporary popular music.
William Henry Cunliffe Jr. is an American jazz pianist and composer.
John Lee Clayton Jr. is an American jazz musician, classical double bassist, arranger, and composer.
Billy Hart is an American jazz drummer and educator. He is known internationally for his work with Herbie Hancock's "Mwandishi" band in the early 1970s, as well as with Shirley Horn, Stan Getz, and Quest, among many others.
The National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO), established as the London Schools' Jazz Orchestra in 1965, is a British jazz orchestra.
Jerry Fielding was an American jazz musician, arranger, band leader, and film composer who emerged in the 1960s after a decade on the blacklist, to create boldly diverse and evocative Oscar-nominated scores, primarily for gritty, often brutally savage, films in western and crime action genres, including the Sam Peckinpah movies The Wild Bunch (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971).
Pablo Ziegler is a Grammy Awards winning Argentine composer, pianist, arranger based in New York City. He is an exponent of nuevo tango, and has worked extensively as Ástor Piazzolla's regular pianist from 1978 until Piazzolla's retirement for health reasons in 1989. During their collaboration, they performed with Milva, Placido Domingo, Gary Burton among others. He played with Piazzolla's re-formed Conjunto 9 in 1983 for his Teatro Colón concert with the Buenos Aires Philharmonic. In 1985 Ziegler composed the music for the film Adios Roberto, and in 1990, he established the New Tango Quartet.
John Sheridan was an American jazz pianist and arranger born in Columbus, Ohio, perhaps best known for his work with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band.
David Nkrumah Liebe Unger Hart, also credited as D. L. Hart, is an American outsider artist, musician, painter, puppeteer and actor. He is best known for his appearances on Adult Swim's Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, performing bizarre puppetry and singing in a variety of voice characterizations. He is also known in the Los Angeles area for his role as a puppeteer on The Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Program, a local public-access television cable TV program, and for performing with his puppet "Doug the Dog" just outside the Hollywood Bowl and Los Angeles Music Center after shows, where he is known to many concert goers simply as the "puppet man". He has also been known at times as David Hart, David Lieber Mintz, David Unger Hart, David King Liebe Hart and DL Hart.
Itaal Shur is an American composer, producer and musician. He has written songs for a number of musicians, including Maxwell, Jewel and Enrique Iglesias, and has produced records for various artists, including Kronos Quartet, The Scumfrog and Lucy Woodward. He was the founding member of the acid jazz group Groove Collective, and has released three solo albums.
Rob Mathes is an American record producer, music arranger, composer, songwriter, and performer. He also writes bluesy spiritual-pop music.
Jerry Grant is an American film and television music score and theme composer, Musical arranger, and jazz musician.
John Matthew Shanks is an American songwriter, record producer and guitarist.
Steve Wiest(néJohn Stephen Wiest; born 1957) is an American trombonist, composer, arranger, big band director, music educator at the collegiate level, jazz clinician, author, and illustrator/cartoonist. From 1981 to 1985, he was a featured trombonist and arranger with the Maynard Ferguson Band. Wiest is in his tenth year as Associate Professor of Jazz Studies and Commercial Music at the University of Denver Lamont School of Music. He is the Coordinator of the 21st Century Music Initiative at the school. Wiest has been a professor for thirty-five of the forty-four years that he has been a professional trombonist, composer, and arranger. From 2007 to 2014, Wiest was Associate Professor of Music in Jazz Studies at the University of North Texas College of Music and, from March 2009 to August 2014, he was director of the One O'Clock Lab Band and coordinator of the Lab Band program. At North Texas, Wiest also taught conducting, trombone, and oversaw The U-Tubes — the College of Music's jazz trombone band. Wiest is a three-time Grammy nominee — individually in 2008 for Best instrumental Arrangement and in 2010 for Best Instrumental Composition, and collaboratively in 2010 for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, which he directed. As of 2013, Wiest has in excess of 58 arrangements and compositions to his credit, which include 10 original compositions from his current project (see 2013–2014 project below).
