56 Jazz arrangers

Alan Baylock is an American composer, arranger, educator, bandleader, clinician, instrumentalist, and the former leader of the Alan Baylock Jazz Orchestra. He was also the Jazz Composer-in-Residence at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, Virginia, from 2011 until 2016 and served as the Chief Arranger for The Airmen of Note jazz ensemble in Washington, D.C., for 20 years before moving to his current position as the Director of the One O'Clock Lab Band at the University of North Texas.

Lautaro "LuKa" Bellucca is a bass and double bassist, composer and arranger, best known as the key bassist in jazz group MUSA's.

Terence Oliver Blanchard is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and music educator. Blanchard started his career in 1980 as a member of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, then Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. He has composed more than forty film scores and performed on more than fifty. He is a frequent collaborator with Spike Lee, and received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Score on Lee's 2018 film BlacKkKlansman.

Margaret Allison Bonds was an American composer, pianist, arranger, and teacher. One of the first black composers and performers to gain recognition in the United States, she is best remembered today for her popular arrangements of African-American spirituals and frequent collaborations with Langston Hughes.

Robert Edward "Bob" Brookmeyer was an American jazz valve trombonist, pianist, arranger, and composer. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Brookmeyer first gained widespread public attention as a member of Gerry Mulligan's quartet from 1954 to 1957. He later worked with Jimmy Giuffre, before rejoining Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band. He garnered 8 Grammy Award nominations during his lifetime.

Dudley Brooks was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer.

Ralph Jose P. Burns was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.

Bennett Lester Carter was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone. From the beginning of his career in the 1920s he was a popular arranger, having written charts for Fletcher Henderson's big band that shaped the swing style. He had an unusually long career that lasted into the 1990s. During the 1980s and '90s, he was nominated for eight Grammy Awards, which included receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award.

James Louis Chirillo is an American jazz guitarist, banjoist, composer, arranger, and band leader.

John Robert Coles was a British composer, arranger, and conductor of light music best known for his composition Tyrolean Tango. Coles often composed under the pen-name 'Paul Stewart' and 'Paul Vincent'.

Joseph Harry Fowler Connick Jr. is an American singer, pianist, composer, actor, and television host. He has sold over 28 million albums worldwide. Connick is ranked among the top 60 best-selling male artists in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 16 million in certified sales. He has had seven top 20 US albums, and ten number-one US jazz albums, earning more number-one albums than any other artist in US jazz chart history.

Joseph Raymond Conniff was an American bandleader and arranger best known for his Ray Conniff Singers during the 1960s.

Jack Cooper is an American composer, arranger, orchestrator, multireedist, and music educator. He has written music for and performed or recorded by internationally known pop, jazz, and classical artists including Aaron Neville, Marc Secara, Jiggs Whigham, the Berlin Jazz Orchestra, Lenny Pickett, Joyce Cobb, Bernie Dresel's BBB, Donald Brown, Young Voices Brandenburg, Jimi Tunnell, Christian McBride, the Westchester Jazz Orchestra, the U.S. Army Jazz Ambassadors, the Dallas Winds, and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra.

Dominick P. "Don" Costa was an American conductor and record producer. He discovered singer Paul Anka and worked on several hit albums by Frank Sinatra, including Sinatra and Strings and My Way.

Robert Harry "Bob" Curnow is an American musician who served as a trombonist, staff arranger and producer for the Stan Kenton Orchestra during the 1960s and 1970s. As a composer and arranger he has become well known for large ensemble jazz music set to contemporary fusion and rock music of groups such as Chicago, Blood, Sweat and Tears, and the Yellowjackets. Most notably he arranged the music for and produced the award-winning and critically acclaimed CD, Bob Curnow's L.A. Big Band Plays The Music of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays. His compositions and arrangements are heavily influenced by earlier writers for the Stan Kenton Orchestra such as Pete Rugolo, Bill Russo, Johnny Richards and Bill Holman. Curnow is currently owner and President of Sierra Music Publications, Inc., he is also prominent in the instrumental music and jazz education fields.

Tadley Ewing Peake Dameron was an American jazz composer, arranger, and pianist.

Maria Pia De Vito is an Italian jazz singer, composer, and arranger.

Robert Lrod Dorough was an American bebop and cool jazz vocalist, pianist, composer, songwriter, arranger, and producer. Dorough became famous as the composer and performer of songs in the series Schoolhouse Rock!, as well as for his work with Miles Davis, Blossom Dearie, and others.

Atilla Engin (1946-2019) was a Turkish American fusion jazz drummer. From 1974 to 2001 he was active in Denmark as a musician and educator; he organized music festivals and represented Denmark as a musical ambassador. In 2001, he left Denmark for the United States, where he formed an orchestra.

Ian Ernest Gilmore Evans was a Canadian-American jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest orchestrators in jazz, playing an important role in the development of cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz, and jazz fusion. He is best known for his acclaimed collaborations with Miles Davis.

Douglas Clare Fischer was an American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. After graduating from Michigan State University, he became the pianist and arranger for the vocal group the Hi-Lo's in the late 1950s. Fischer went on to work with Donald Byrd and Dizzy Gillespie, and became known for his Latin and bossa nova recordings in the 1960s. He composed the Latin jazz standard "Morning", and the jazz standard "Pensativa". Consistently cited by jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock as a major influence, he was nominated for eleven Grammy Awards during his lifetime, winning for his landmark album, 2+2 (1981), the first of Fischer's records to incorporate the vocal ensemble writing developed during his Hi-Lo's days into his already sizable Latin jazz discography; it was also the first recorded installment in Fischer's three-decade-long collaboration with his son Brent. Fischer was also a posthumous Grammy winner for ¡Ritmo! (2012) and for Music for Strings, Percussion and the Rest (2013).

Martin Fondse is a Dutch pianist and composer. He also plays the vibrandoneon, the baroque version of the melodica. He is a composer and arranger in the fields of jazz and contemporary music and he leads the Martin Fondse Orchestra.

Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé, known as Ferde Grofé was an American composer, arranger, pianist and instrumentalist. He is best known for his 1931 five-movement tone poem, Grand Canyon Suite.

Neal Paul Hefti was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and arranger. He wrote music for The Odd Couple movie and TV series and for the Batman TV series.

Willis Leonard Holman, known professionally as Bill Holman, is an American composer, arranger, conductor, saxophonist, and songwriter working in jazz and traditional pop. His career is over six decades long, having started with the Charlie Barnet orchestra in 1950.

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. is an American record producer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer. His career spans over 60 years in the entertainment industry with a record 80 Grammy Award nominations, 28 Grammys, and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992.

Thaddeus Joseph Jones was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader who has been called "one of the all-time greatest jazz trumpet soloists."

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.

James Last, also known as Hansi, was a German composer and big band leader of the James Last Orchestra. Initially a jazz bassist, his trademark "happy music" made his numerous albums best-sellers in Germany and the United Kingdom, with 65 of his albums reaching the charts in the UK alone. His composition "Happy Heart" became an international success in interpretations by Andy Williams and Petula Clark.

Michel Jean Legrand was a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist. Legrand was a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores, in addition to many songs. His scores for the films of French New Wave director Jacques Demy, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), earned Legrand his first Academy Award nominations. Legrand won his first Oscar for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

Magnus Lindgren is a Swedish jazz musician. He studied at the Västerås Music College. He then attended the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm, Sweden, and began working with the Soul Enterprise. He began playing with Herbie Hancock at age 18, and formed his current quartet in 1997. He has also worked with James Ingram, Koop, Barbara Hendricks, Gregory Porter, Till Brönner, Nicola Conte, Marie Fredriksson, Ivan Lins and David Foster. In 2001, Lindgren was voted the best Swedish jazz artist of the year by the Fasching jazz club in Stockholm. He has received a number of awards, including a Grammis award in 2001, and the Arne Domnérus Prize.

Rich A. Matteson, was an American jazz artist, collegiate music educator, international jazz clinician, big band leader, and jazz composer/arranger. Euphonium was his primary instrument, although Matteson was proficient on several other low brass instruments, particularly bass trumpet, valve trombone, tuba, and Helicon. He also was a proficient jazz pianist. Except for Kiane Zawadi, Matteson was the only significant euphonium soloist in jazz.

Onzy Durrett Matthews, Jr. was an American jazz pianist, singer, arranger and composer as well as a television and movie actor. He is best known for the big band arrangements done for the Lou Rawls albums Black and Blue and Tobacco Road, as well as arrangements for several of Ray Charles' 1960s releases. He had his own big band for many years and recorded numerous tracks for Capitol Records, including two albums released under his own name. He later had a close relationship with the Duke Ellington orchestra, working as a pianist, arranger and conductor through the late 1960s and 1970s.

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.

Don Menza is an American jazz saxophonist, arranger, and composer.

Alton Glenn Miller was an American big-band trombonist, arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was the best-selling recording artist from 1939 to 1942, leading one of the best-known big bands. Miller's recordings include "In the Mood", "Moonlight Serenade", "Pennsylvania 6-5000", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "A String of Pearls", "At Last", "(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo", "American Patrol", "Tuxedo Junction", "Elmer's Tune", and "Little Brown Jug". In just four years Glenn Miller scored 16 number-one records and 69 top ten hits—more than Elvis Presley and the Beatles did in their careers.

Robert Alan Mintzer is an American jazz saxophonist, composer, arranger, and big band leader.

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential characteristics when notated. His composition "Jelly Roll Blues", published in 1915, was one of the first published jazz compositions. Morton also wrote "King Porter Stomp", "Wolverine Blues", "Black Bottom Stomp", and "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say", the last a tribute to New Orleans musicians from the turn of the 20th century.

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.

James Mundy was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, arranger, and composer, best known for his arrangements for Benny Goodman, Count Basie, and Earl Hines.

Martin "Musa" Musaubach is an Argentine pianist, keyboardist, composer, arranger, producer and band leader based in Taiwan.

Oliver Edward Nelson was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger, composer, and bandleader. His 1961 Impulse! album The Blues and the Abstract Truth (1960) is regarded as one of the most significant recordings of its era. The centerpiece of the album is the definitive version of Nelson's composition, "Stolen Moments". Other important recordings from the early 1960s are More Blues and the Abstract Truth and Sound Pieces, both also on Impulse!.

Sammy Nestico is an American composer and arranger. Nestico is best known for his arrangements for the Count Basie orchestra.

Claus Ogerman was a German arranger, conductor, and composer best known for his work with Billie Holiday, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Frank Sinatra, and Diana Krall.

Melvin James "Sy" Oliver was an American jazz arranger, trumpeter, composer, singer and bandleader.

Miklós József "Jackie" Orszáczky was a Hungarian-Australian musician, arranger, vocalist and record producer. His musical styles included jazz, blues, R&B, funk and progressive rock; he mainly played bass guitar – from the early 1990s he used a modified piccolo bass – but also various other instruments. In 2006 Orszaczky was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit by the Hungarian government. Also that year Orszaczky was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and died on 3 February 2008, aged 59.

George Paxton was an American big band leader, saxophonist, arranger, and publisher during the 1930s and 1940s. He was president of Coed Records and a producer for the label.

Herbert Daly Phillips, known professionally as Herbie Phillips, was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and arranger. He spent much of his life working in Las Vegas. He played trumpet in bands led by Louie Bellson, Buddy Morrow, and Billy May. He composed "Little Train", which was recorded by the Buddy Rich Big Band. He worked as trumpeter and conductor for Frank Sinatra and Frank Sinatra Jr.

Donald Matthew Redman was an American jazz musician, arranger, bandleader, and composer.

Pietro "Pete" Rugolo was an American jazz composer, arranger and record producer.

George Allen Russell was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and theorist. He is considered one of the first jazz musicians to contribute to general music theory with a theory of harmony based on jazz rather than European music, in his book Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (1953).

Artie Shaw was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader and actor. Also an author, Shaw wrote both fiction and non-fiction.

Kenneth Neil Slater is an American educator, composer, and pianist. In 2008, he retired as professor emeritus. He has composed over 80 works for jazz ensemble and has written for symphony, chamber groups, a cappella choir, opera, and musical theatre.

Peter Tripp Sprague is an American jazz guitarist, record producer, and audio engineer. He owns SpragueLand Studios and the label SBE Records. He invented a twin-neck guitar with one neck from a classical guitar and one from a steel-string acoustic guitar.

William Thomas Strayhorn was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger, best remembered for his long-time collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington that lasted nearly three decades. His compositions include "Take the 'A' Train", "Chelsea Bridge", "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing", and "Lush Life".

Jack Arthur Walrath is an American post-bop jazz trumpeter and musical arranger known for his work with Ray Charles, Gary Peacock, Charles Mingus, and Glenn Ferris, among others.