EGN NEWS DESK
Bill Holman, an arranger and composer whose work with Stan Kenton, Gerry Mulligan and different jazz greats established him as a transformative determine within the cool jazz sound related to Fifties California, died on Monday at his house within the Hollywood Hills part of Los Angeles. He was 96.
Kathryn King, his stepdaughter, introduced the demise.
Mr. Holman’s longtime collaboration with Mr. Kenton, first as a saxophonist in his band and later as an arranger, supplied the inspiration of his status, however he additionally went on to rearrange for Maynard Ferguson, Count Basie, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett, Michael Bublé and plenty of others, and to guide his personal 16-piece ensemble.
He gained three Grammy Awards — for his preparations of “Take the A Train” (1988) for Doc Severinsen’s band and “Straight, No Chaser” (1998) for his personal, and for his authentic composition “A View From the Side” (1996) — and contributed compositions and preparations to seven different Grammy-winning data, together with Natalie Cole’s “Unforgettable” (1991). He acquired a complete of 16 Grammy nominations.
Mr. Holman was recognized for his economical, linear preparations, which used elegant counterpoint and dissonance to enliven each previous requirements and his personal works. Reared on the large bands of the Nineteen Thirties and ’40s, he helped Mr. Kenton and others from that period make the transition to a extra energetic sound within the postwar years.
He was already an modern arranger when he was in his 20s, creating new avenues that jazz would pursue over the next many years. And but, whereas he was typically imitated, his distinctive model remained simply recognizable, even on items that he ghostwrote for different arrangers.
“When folks consult with him as a genius, that’s not hyperbole,” Ken Poston, the founder and director of the Los Angeles Jazz Institute, mentioned in a telephone interview. “That’s how many people really feel.”
He additionally injected a superb little bit of classical affect. Bela Bartok was a frequent inspiration, as was Arnold Schoenberg, specifically his avant-garde twelve-tone music.
It was with a Schoenberg-inspired piece that Mr. Holman, then simply out of music college, caught the eye of Mr. Kenton, a relentless experimenter who was in search of a brand new course because the jazz world was transferring away from standard big-band sounds.
Mr. Kenton employed him as a tenor saxophonist and requested him to jot down preparations on the facet. Although he finally fired him as a musician following what Mr. Holman referred to as a “lusty dialogue” of the band’s course, Mr. Kenton saved him as lead arranger, and for a lot of the Fifties he was turning out as many as two items per week.
He organized six of the seven tracks on the 1955 album “Contemporary Concepts,” broadly thought of to be amongst Mr. Kenton’s finest. He wrote and organized “Invention for Guitar and Trumpet,” a monitor on the 1953 album “New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm,” which grew to become one of many best-known items within the Kenton repertoire and was heard within the 1955 film “Blackboard Jungle.”
Although Mr. Holman’s preparations have been considerate and methodical, his sound was removed from sanitized or tutorial. And he took a laid-back, virtually haphazard strategy to his writing, which might typically start with tinkling aimlessly on a piano.
“If I hear one thing that I like, I’ll make notice of it and fiddle round with it for some time to see what I can develop,” he mentioned in a 2008 interview with the web site JazzWax. “Or generally I’ll simply begin writing foolishness, and in some way the connection between my hand and my head kicks in, and I begin considering of issues.”
Willis Leonard Holman was born on May 21, 1927, in Olive, Calif., a city in Orange County, and grew up in close by Santa Ana. His father, Leonard, was an accountant, and his mom, Ida May (Beard) Holman, managed the house.
He didn’t come from a musical household, however he fell in love with the big-band sounds he heard on the radio. He performed clarinet in junior excessive, then switched to saxophone in highschool.
To please his mother and father, he pursued a profession in mechanical engineering — first whereas within the Navy, on the University of Colorado, after which for a yr on the University of California, Los Angeles. But engineering didn’t transfer him, and some years after leaving college he enrolled on the Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles, the place he realized the basics of arranging and composition. He performed saxophone with plenty of bands across the metropolis and was with the Charlie Barnet orchestra when he first caught Mr. Kenton’s consideration.
Mr. Holman was married 3 times, to Jocelyn Hansen, the singer Jeri Southern and Gaye Holly Day; all three marriages resulted in divorce. Along together with his stepdaughter, from his second marriage, he’s survived by two sons from his first marriage, Jeff and Roger; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Mr. Holman fashioned his personal band in 1975. It toured repeatedly and practiced each week till 2020, when the pandemic introduced journey and in-person gatherings to a halt.
In 2010 the National Endowment for the Arts named Mr. Holman a Jazz Master, thought of the best honor within the discipline.
More than something, Mr. Poston mentioned, it was his band that saved him recent, giving him a laboratory to check out new preparations and concepts.
“Most writers don’t have a band like that at your fingertips,” he added. “It was a relentless residing and respiratory establishment.”
