Rick Wilkins

Herbert Richard "Rick" Wilkins (born February 1, 1927 in Hamilton , Ontario ) is a Canadian composer , arranger and jazz musician ( tenor saxophone and other woodwind instruments ) and conductor.

Live and act

Wilkins played in the Jack Ryan and Gav Morton dance orchestras before moving to Toronto at the age of twenty. There he played in the bands of Benny Louis and others and briefly studied arrangement with Phil Nimmons at the Advanced School of Contemporary Music . From 1960 he arranged music for the CBC Orchestra under Jack Kane and arranged and conducted compositions for the CBC and the CTV for Julie Amato , Tommy Ambrose , Guido Basso , Canadian Brass , Burton Cummings , Anne Murray , Wayne and Shuster and others.

For an appearance by Buddy Greco on the Ed Sullivan Show , he edited a title, after the success of which Greco invited him to New York as a conductor in the summer of 1962. In 1970 he became a member of Rob McConnell's band Boss Brass , of which he was a member for more than thirty years. At the same time he began working with Tommy Ambrose , Doug Riley and Larry Trudel in the field of jingle composition . As musical director of several series and specials at CBS TV in Los Angeles, he also worked with the Jackson Five in 1976/77 .

In 1979 he edited Oscar Peterson's Canadian Suite for a television program on the CBC and conducted The Personal Touch (1980) and A Royal Wedding Suite (1981) on his albums . For recordings, he arranged further works by the composer (including The Personal Touch and Royal Wedding Suite ) as well as compositions by Peter Appleyard (including Swing Fever ), Salome Bey , Ed Bickert , Maureen Forrester , Vic Franklyn , Hagood Hardy , Maxwell King , Moe Koffman , Gene Lees , Ginette Reno , Arlene Smith, and others. In 1988 he was commissioned to compose and conduct the music for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Calgary, and in the following year he was music director at the opening gala of the SkyDome in Toronto.

He composed film scores for several television and documentary films and jazz themes, which u. a. performed by Moe Koffman, Rob McConell and Frank Wess . He wrote the symphonic jazz piece TO 150 for the Boss Brass group . PJ Perry commissioned him to arrange a jazz evening for saxophone and symphony orchestra, the premiere of which he played with The Edmonton Symphony and which Wilkins later conducted with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony . In 2005 he wrote further symphonic pieces for Perry and the following year two symphonic arrangements for a performance by John McDermott at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts .

Wilkins also led his own quartet and recorded the LPs Christmas with Rick Wilkins and the Mutual Understanding (1970), My Heart Belongs to Me (1977), For the Sake of Music (1978) and Discovery (1981). He can also be heard on recordings by Phil Nimmons, Duke Ellington , Moe Koffman, Gene Lees, Guido Basso, Peter Appleyard, Trudy Desmond, Bobbi Sherron, Louie Bellson , Ian McDougall and the Concord Festival All Stars .

In 2002 he was honored with the Order of Canada . From 2005 to 2008 he was nominated for the National Jazz Award as Arranger of the Year .

Web links

• Canadian Jazz Archive - Rick Wilkins
• Rick Wilkins ( English, French ) In: Encyclopedia of Music in Canada . published by The Canadian Encyclopedia .
• Rick Wilkins in the Internet Movie Database (English)