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Ralph Burns, 1922-2001
Composer, arranger and pianist Ralph Burns died in Los Angeles on November 21, 2001, at the age of 79, from pneumonia and complications following a stroke.
One of the most distinguished arrangers to emerge from the big-band era, Burns enjoyed an unusually varied career spanning jazz, Broadway, film and television. He won two Academy Awards for Cabaret and All That Jazz, an Emmy for Baryshnikov on Broadway, and a Tony Award for the musical revue Fosse.
Ralph Jose P. Burns was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on June 29, 1922. He began playing piano as a child and studied briefly at the New England Conservatory of Music, although he later said that much of his real education in jazz arranging came from listening to records and painstakingly transcribing what he heard. After early work with Charlie Barnet’s orchestra, Burns joined Woody Herman’s band in 1944 as pianist and arranger.
Burns quickly became one of the principal architects of the celebrated Woody Herman sound. His arrangements and compositions included “Apple Honey,” “Bijou” and the ambitious Summer Sequence, whose final movement evolved into “Early Autumn” and became an important showcase for the young tenor saxophonist Stan Getz. Burns’s sophisticated harmonies and unusually subtle orchestral colors distinguished him from many of the more aggressively rhythmic big-band arrangers of the period. Read more…
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