Ken Williams (copyist)

Ken J. Williams (1929 or 1930 - March 10, 2015 ) was a British-American copyist , arranger and trumpeter .

Williams grew up in London, where he worked in the 1950s as a copyist for the jazz bands of Johnny Dankworth , Jack Parnell , Humphrey Lyttelton and Ted Heath , as well as in the field of classical music for the company Boosey & Hawkes, for which he Compositions u. a. prepared for publication by Igor Stravinsky and Zoltán Kodály . After getting to know the pianist John Lewis on his England tour with the Modern Jazz Quartet , Williams emigrated to the United States in 1962. In New York he worked for the companies of Emile Charlap , Sam Herman and Mathilde Pincus. The composers and arrangers he worked for in the years that followed include Billy Byers , Benny Carter , Dick Cone , Jack Elliott , Gil Evans , Sy Johnson , Quincy Jones , Thad Jones , Oliver Nelson , Don Redman and Ron Roullier . He has also worked for Aretha Franklin , Cleo Laine , Johnny Mathis , Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan . Together with the copyist Arnold Arnstein, he worked on Leonard Bernstein's Mass and on the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti's Tamu-Tamu . In the 1980s he worked as a copyist and arranger for Benny Goodman . In 1980 Williams published the book Music Preparation: A Guide to Music Copying , which is considered a standard work. In his later years he worked mostly for Philip Glass and was a member of the leadership of the American Society of Music Copyists .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Requiem. Retrieved July 4, 2019 (American English). 
2. ↑ Jeffrey Magee: The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz . 2004