William Allaudin Mathieu (born 1937) is a composer, pianist, choir director, music teacher, and author. He began studying piano at the age of six, and began recording his music and compositions in the 1970s on his record label, Cold Mountain Music. Mathieu has composed and recorded solo piano works, chamber pieces, choral music, and song cycles, and he has written four books on music, music theory, and how to live a musical life.
Mathieu studied jazz composition with William Russo from 1954 to 1958; Eurocentric music with Easley Blackwood from 1963 to 1967; Middle Eastern music with Nubian master musician Hamza El Din from 1971 to 2004, with whom he also collaborated; and raga with North Indian vocalist Pandit Pran Nath from 1973 to 1996. Mathieu's recordings reflect the integration of these and many other influences.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s (as Bill Mathieu), he spent several years as an arranger and composer for Stan Kenton and Duke Ellington orchestras. [1] Kenton's album Standards in Silhouette consists entirely of Mathieu's arrangements [2] and revealed the young Mathieu (then 22 years of age) to be an adept manipulator of compositional materials.
He was one of the founders and the musical director for The Second City in Chicago, [3] the first ongoing improvisational theater troupe in the United States, and was later the musical director for The Committee, an improv theater in San Francisco that was an offshoot of The Second City. In the 1970s, he was on the faculties of San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Mills College. In 1969, Mathieu founded the Sufi Choir in San Francisco among followers of Samuel L. Lewis, and he directed the choir until 1982.
Mathieu enjoys sharing his tuning expertise with others, including beginners — and especially those who are convinced they are tone-deaf. “Nobody is tone-deaf,” he claims. He has regularly trained his “Tone-Deaf Choirs” to sing in tune, often in public.
He now devotes himself to practice, performance, recording, composition, teaching, and writing from his home near Sebastopol, California.
Mathieu was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father was Aron M. Mathieu (1907-1996), publisher and founder of Minicam (later retitled Modern Photography) in 1937, editor at Writer's Digest for three decades, and founder of the Writer's Market franchise. His mother was Rosella Feher Mathieu (1906-2008), noted authority on herbs, and author of Herb Grower's Complete Guide (1950), one of the first books in the United States on growing and cooking with herbs.
In Cincinnati, Mathieu attended Kennedy-Silverton Elementary School (1942-1949) and Walnut Hills High School (1949-1954). In Chicago, he attended University of Chicago (1954-1958), earning a BA degree.
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Gerald Joseph Mulligan, also known as Jeru, was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though primarily known as one of the leading jazz baritone saxophonists—playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz—Mulligan was also a significant arranger, working with Claude Thornhill, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, and others. His pianoless quartet of the early 1950s with trumpeter Chet Baker is still regarded as one of the best cool jazz groups. Mulligan was also a skilled pianist and played several other reed instruments. Several of his compositions, such as "Walkin' Shoes" and "Five Brothers", have become standards.
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Standards in Silhouette is an album recorded in September 1959 by Stan Kenton and his orchestra. The entire set of arrangements for the LP were written by Bill Mathieu. This recording stands alone in approach and style; Kenton himself only plays on "Django" and every standard is done at a slow, ballad tempo with very sparse, effusive writing.
City of Glass, an album originally issued as a 10" LP by Stan Kenton, consists entirely of the music of Bob Graettinger. The original album has been reconstituted in different LP re-issues, and the entire set of Kenton/Graettinger Capitol Records sessions is on the digital CD City of Glass.
Adventures in Jazz is an album by the Stan Kenton Orchestra, recorded in late 1961 but not released until about a year later in November 1962. The album won a Grammy Award in the category for Best Jazz Performance – Large Group (Instrumental) category in 1963. This would be Kenton's second Grammy honor in as many years with the first being Kenton's West Side Story winning the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album in 1962. Adventures In Jazz was also nominated for Best Engineered recording for the 1963 Grammys. The 1999 CD re-issue of Adventures In Jazz is augmented with two alternate takes from the original recording sessions and one track from Kenton's release Sophisticated Approach.
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