BILL HOLMAN
Genres: Big Band, Swing • United States

American songwriter, arranger, conductor and tenor saxophonist, born May 21, 1927 in Olive, near Orange, California; died on May 6, 2024 in Hollywood, CA. from discogs Chronology aligned the timeline of Bill Holman’s music education with a remarkable precision, positioning him to intersect with a destiny that in 1998 led critic Gary Giddins to pronounce him perhaps “the premier living jazz orchestrator.” When he died on May 6 in Olive, California, two weeks and a day short of his 97th birthday, his career had clocked nearly a century of big band history from ballroom jitterbugs to classroom academics. Born in 1927, he reached early adolescence as the first swing bands hit him like a missile at an impressionable age. His ear was inspired by the sweeping flights of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, leading him to take up the clarinet when he was 12. The writings of Jimmy Mundy, Eddie Durham, Jerry read more...