Bill Holman

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Born:
May 21, 1927, he's 85 and American.
Birthname:
Willis Leonard Holman.
Snapshot:
An Artist with 15 releases, and credited 25 times on others' music. 25 collaborations.

Biography

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Willis Leonard Holman (born May 21, 1927), known also as Bill Holman, is an American songwriter, conductor, composer/arranger, and saxophonist working primarily in the jazz idiom.

Although he has performed and recorded as a tenor saxophonist, Holman is best known as an arranger. Through his acquaintance with Gene Roland, Holman was auditioned by Stan Kenton and hired as a tenor sax player around 1951.

Kenton was apparently attracted to Holman's ability to integrate counterpoint and dissonance in subtle yet distinctive ways, and for his knack for making the usually-unswinging Kenton band "swing" in its own particular fashion. Holman became Kenton's chief arranger, and wrote much of Kenton's late 1950s repertoire; including one of Kenton's last albums, Contemporary Concepts. He continued to write for Kenton, on and off, throughout the 1960s and 70s.

In addition to his work for Kenton, Holman has provided charts for Woody Herman, Doc Severinsen, Buddy Rich, Terry Gibbs, Count Basie, Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band and others. He formed his own California-based band in 1975 and continues to perform with it in the U.S. and worldwide. His 1997 recording Brilliant Corners/The Music of Thelonious Monk won a Grammy award.

Bill Holman is also credited for playing brass backups on The Fifth Dimension's 1969 album, The Age of Aquarius.

The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Holman_(musician). Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.

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Genres

Bebop, Jazz, Post-bop. Vote on Genres

Discography

39 releases – 15 under his own name and 25 credits on others' music Edit
Collaborations, Groups and Family
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