My name is Kathryn King and I'm a music industry veteran dealing in many different genres of music. My love of jazz blossomed when I was just a wee tad, the daughter of a great singer, Jeri Southern, and step-daughter of a great player/composer/arranger, Bill Holman. In 1998 I did a compilation of some of my mom's best recordings, as a tribute to her. My impulse to do a film about Bill Holman derives first from the immense respect and love I have for him but, equally important, the fact that a comprehensive profile of this superb artist - an NEA Jazz Master - does not currently exist. The fact that he is still charging full speed ahead at age 90 and that his band is smokin' hot after 42 years of playing, touring and recording means that my expert cinematographer Gil Gilbert and I have had the benefit of hours of primary source voices, perspectives, and performances as we have worked on this project for the last 4 years. We are far from finished - there is still some shooting to do, plus editing and a daunting mountain of music licensing ahead - but we really need help in order to continue, let alone complete the film. I hope you'll join us in making Charting Jazz happen! Bill Holman is one of a kind, a great American artist, and I want the world to know about him. Check out the video for Charting Jazz!
The Filmmakers
Videographer: Gil Gilbert
Gil Gilbert is a videographer who has for decades produced EPKs and other creative, tailored pieces for branding and promotion. For 15 years he worked for Sony Music, creating promotional videos for such artists as Billy Joel, Titanic (the film), Wynton Marsalis, The Pixies, Yo-Yo Ma, and Roger Waters. Recent clients include the Metropolitan Opera, the Olana Foundation and Ippolita Jewelry. In recent years he has branched out to longform documentaries, the most recent of which, Misfire: the Rise and Fall of the Shooting Gallery, was invited to show at multiple film festivals upon its release in 2013.
Producer/Director: Kathryn King
Kathryn King, producer/director of the film and stepdaughter of Bill Holman, has spent her entire 45-year career in the music industry. Over the course of this time she has concentrated on two main areas of endeavor - publicity/marketing and audio/video production. Her eclectic tastes inspired her to devote her energies to a wide variety of musical genres as, among other things, Director of U.S. Operations for both ECM Records and Teldec, Director of the Classical Division of ABC Records, Director of Product Management at Sony Classical, and as independent record producer and media consultant. Over the last 20 years she has produced promotional videos on such artists as Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Ottmar Liebert, Midori, and others. Her recordings have been nominated for Grammy Awards three times and in 1986 she won the Grammy for Best Children's Recording for her production of one of 35 records made for Sesame Street. A veteran of many years of publicizing and marketing artists and their recordings, King has enjoyed working with the Vienna Boys Choir, Midori, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Susan Narucki, Donald Berman,Thomas Hampson, Keith Jarrett, Other Minds, Netherlands Bach Society, Iannis Xenakis’ Persepolis L.A., Midori, Zuill Bailey, Frans Brüggen, Denis Matsuev, the San Lucas Band, Arvo Pärt, Emanuel Ax, James Morris, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Paul Moravec, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, LAGQ, Heiner Goebbels, Elena Ruehr, the Juilliard String Quartet, Ottmar Liebert, Jane Eaglen, the Hilliard Ensemble, Bill Frisell, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Daniel Lentz, the Del Sol String Quartet, Yefim Bronfman, the Kuijken Brothers, David Torn, the Eclectic Orange Festival, John Abercrombie and many others.
The Campaign
About this project
Charting Jazz: The Mastery of Bill Holman will tell the story of one of America’s most exceptional musicians, jazz arranger/composer Bill Holman. Revered and beloved by players, critics and scholars of the genre, Holman is nevertheless not well known to the general public. It’s not an exaggeration to say that millions have heard his charts (arrangements) for such artists as Natalie Cole, Count Basie, Michael Bublé, Stan Kenton, the Fifth Dimension, Tony Bennett, Carmen McRae, Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, and countless others, but even dedicated music lovers often don’t understand what the role of an arranger is and why it is important. This film will explain the pivotal role of arrangers in every recording we hear and why this man is considered a consummate master of the art.
Charting Jazz will show Bill Holman in action, conducting a residency at the prestigious Eastman School of Music, rehearsing his own ensemble, the 16-piece Bill Holman Band, and in performance at a supper club in Los Angeles playing the entire contents of the Band’s Brilliant Corners CD, an album of Monk tunes that has taken on iconic status since its original release. Bill Holman won a Grammy for one of the arrangements on the album, for Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser”. In the words of Doug Ramsey, who interviews Holman in the film and writes the essential jazz blog Rifftides:
“Allowed to drop out of sight, never reissued, Holman’s Monk CD recorded in 1997 is one of the large-ensemble masterpieces of the second half of the twentieth century. Nor has there been anything that I know of to match it in the new millennium.”
Charting Jazz will interview Bill Holman’s composing and arranging colleagues, musicians in his band, young players coming up, producers, writers, educators and fans who count Bill Holman among the greatest exponents of America’s artform, JAZZ.
Can’t contribute financially but still want to help out?
We’d LOVE to hear from anyone who has memories, anecdotes, or questions that they’d like to share about Bill or his music. Please post them here in the comment section, or on the social media of your choice and include a link to this Indiegogo campaign.
About Bill Holman
NEA Jazz Master Bill Holman (b.1927 in Olive, CA) has been sought after since the earliest years of his career by band leaders, instrumental soloists, and singers alike for his skills as arranger. His unique style utilizes often complex contrapuntal textures juxtaposed with spare, elegant lines which form the perfect framework for a soloist. Holman has provided arrangements for many stellar artists including Charlie Barnet, Count Basie, Louie Bellson, Tony Bennett, Bob Brookmeyer, Michael Bublé, June Christy, Natalie Cole, Buddy de Franco, Maynard Ferguson, The Fifth Dimension, Terry Gibbs, Woody Herman, Lee Konitz, Peggy Lee, Mel Lewis, Carmen McRae, Gerry Mulligan, Mark Murphy, Anita O’Day, Art Pepper, Buddy Rich, Diane Schuur, Doc Severinson, Zoot Sims, Mel Tormé, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Williams, Phil Woods, and many recently completed commissions.
For decades Holman has enjoyed teaching at composing/arranging clinics and master classes throughout both the U.S. and Europe. In the U.S., he has taught at the Berklee, Eastman, Manhattan, and Grove Schools of Music, and at many universities. Outside the U.S., in such countries as Germany, Holland, Switzerland, England and in Scandinavia, he is frequently invited to conduct established resident jazz orchestras at radio stations and festivals, in addition to educational clinics and workshops.
Mr. Holman formed the 16-piece Bill Holman Big Band in 1975. The ensemble continues to perform in clubs, concerts and festivals. Holman, whose roots as tenor saxophonist, composer and writer extend as far back as 1949 in ensembles with such artists as Ike Carpenter, Stan Kenton, Charlie Barnet, Shelly Manne, Shorty Rogers and Mel Lewis, is perhaps most revered today for ushering the genre of big band music into the 21st century. In his hands the language of the big band has continually evolved, so that the arrangements he writes today sound utterly fresh and of-the-moment. The combination of his innovative, virtuosic, often whimsical writing with the mighty power of his band, which has been rehearsing and performing together for over 40 years, is an experience his audiences don’t soon forget. He has been nominated for the Grammy Award fifteen times, most recently in 2013 for his instrumental composition Without a Paddle. He has won three Grammys - in 1987 for Best Instrumental Arrangement (Take the A Train, for Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Orchestra); in 1995 for Best Instrumental Composition (A View from the Side for the Bill Holman Band); and in 1997 for a stunning arrangement of Thelonious Monk’s Straight, No Chaser, also recorded by the Bill Holman Band on their album Brilliant Corners.
The National Endowment for the Arts
bestowed the nation’s highest honor in jazz, the 2010 NEA Jazz Masters Award, on Bill Holman “in recognition of a lifetime of extraordinary achievement as composer, arranger and tenor saxophonist.”
Partial List of Career Honors
Fifteen Grammy nominations; Grammy Award: Best Instrumental Arrangement, 1997 (Straight, No Chaser / Bill Holman Band); Grammy Award: Best Instrumental Composition, 1995 (A View From the Side / Bill Holman Band); Grammy Award: Best Instrumental Arrangement, 1987 (Take the A Train / Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Orchestra); Jazz Journalists Association: Arranger of the Year, 2011; National Endowment for the Arts: Jazz Masters Award, 2010; ASCAP: Jazz Living Legend Award, inscribed into Wall of Fame at Jazz at Lincoln Center, 2008; American Society of Music Arrangers & Composers: Golden Score Award, 2008; Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies & the New Jersey Jazz Society: inducted into the American Jazz Hall of Fame, 2006; Downbeat Readers Poll: Arranger of the Year in 1998, 1999, 2003; Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll: Arranger of the Year in 1998, 1999, 2000; Jazz Times Readers Poll: Best Arranger in 1990, 1994, 1997, 1998; Elmhurst College: Honorary Doctorate, 2009
