Duane Tatro

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Duane L. Tatro (born May 18, 1927 in Van Nuys , California , † August 9, 2020 in Bell Canyon, California) was an American musician and composer in the field of jazz and film music .

Live and act

Tatro grew up in Iowa , where his family moved when he was one year old. Enthusiastic about the swing big bands , he first learned the clarinet before switching to the tenor saxophone . After his family returned to Los Angeles , he played as a professional musician in the USO troop support during World War II ; at the age of 15 he became a member of the musicians' union. He then played in the backing band of Mel Tormé , at the age of 16 with Stan Kenton , with whom he performed in the Los Angeles area. When Kenton moved to New York with his band, he stayed in California and graduated from high school; during this time he played in dance bands. Shortly before the end of the war, he was called up for military service in the US Navy, which he completed as a musician in the Great Lakes Naval Station . There he met musicians like Artie Shaw .

From then on, Tatro began to occupy himself with composition and arrangement ; after his discharge from the Navy he played with Joe Venuti and Dick Pierce and studied music at the University of Southern California . This was followed by a two-and-a-half-year stay in Paris, where he studied at the École Normale de Musique , composition with Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger , counterpoint with Andrée Vaurabourg and orchestral direction with Jean Fournier . During his stay in France, he formed a jazz band that also accompanied guest musicians such as Rex Stewart and Roy Eldridge . In 1951 Tatro returned to the United States, where he continued his studies and also worked in an electronics company. In 1953 he received an offer from Lester Koenig to record four compositions for Contemporary Records with musicians from West Coast Jazz . The recordings were made in September 1954 and April 1955, and another three tracks were recorded in November 1955. His jazz compositions like Maybe Next Year were also recorded by Art Pepper and Red Norvo .

In his main occupation, Tarto wrote music for film and television from the 1960s, including for well-known TV series such as Invasion von der Wega , FBI , M * A * S * H , Hawaii Five-Zero , The Streets of San Francisco , Cannon , Love Boat , Cobra, Take Over , The Denver Clan , The Colbys - The Empire , Hotel and Barnaby Jones . It was only with his partial retirement from the mid-1990s that he continued his work as a composer of classical music.

Lawrence Kart counts Tatro with his composition Minor Incident (1955) among composers such as George Russell , John Carisi , Gil Mellé , Teddy Charles , Jimmy Giuffre , Teo Macero and Charles Mingus , who were among the experimenters of the jazz avant-garde in the 1950s . His film scores were often dissonant and based on twelve-tone music .

Tatro died at the age of 93. He was the father of three children and also left behind his wife, with whom he was married for 56 years.

Discographic notes

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Max Harrison , Charles Fox, Eric Thacker, Stuart Nicholson : The Essential Jazz Records: Modernism to Postmodernism , p. 631
  2. ^ The Oxford Companion to Jazz, edited by Bill Kirchner, p. 451
  3. ^ Ray Starman: TV Noir: The Twentieth Century , 2006 - page 81
personal data
SURNAME Tatro, Duane
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tatro, Duane L.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Van Nuys , California
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 2020
Place of death Bell Canyon, California