Francy Boland

François "Francy" Boland (born November 6, 1929 in Namur , † August 12, 2005 in Geneva ) was a Belgian jazz pianist and arranger .

Life

Boland started playing the piano when he was eight . He studied after the Second World War music at the Conservatory of Liege .

After completing his music studies at the Conservatory in Liege (Liège), Boland, born in 1929 in Namur, Belgium, began his jazz career a. a. at The Bob Shots . In the first half of the 1950s he mainly worked in Paris as an arranger for jazz artists such as Bobby Jaspar , Bernard Peiffer , Henri Renaud and Fats Sadi . In 1955 the trumpeter Chet Baker brought him into his quintet as a pianist, paving the way for him to the USA. Between 1956 and 1958, Boland lived in New York, where he worked as an arranger for the likes of Count Basie and Benny Goodman .

He was at the height of his career in the 1960s and 1970s. On the initiative of Gigi Campi , he founded the Kenny Clarke / Francy Boland Big Band with drummer Kenny Clarke in 1959 . After very successful years, this dissolved in 1972. In the following years Francy Boland composed for well-known orchestras, including a. Count Basie .

One of the artists who worked with Boland was Gitte Hænning , who recorded a swing album in 1969 after years as a pop singer and thus made herself known to a wider public as a jazz singer .

In 1984 Boland arranged the music to lyrics by the American songwriter Gene Lees, who had translated poems by Pope John Paul II into English. The record was recorded with the singer Sarah Vaughan and an orchestra under the direction of Lalo Schifrin .

On August 12, 2005, François "Francy" Boland died of cancer in his adopted home, Geneva.

Web links

• Obituary in The Guardian
• Death report of Deutsche Welle