Billy Childs Quartet

Saturday, February 1 / 7:30pm

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With 18 Grammy nominations and six awards, Billy Childs has emerged as one of the foremost composers and pianists of his era, “consistently expanding the dimensions of the jazz genre – and beyond” (The Los Angeles Times). His album, "The Winds of Change", won a Grammy in February for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. 

Childs’ canon of original compositions and arrangements has garnered him the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009), a composers award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2015), and two Chamber Music America grants: the Jazz New Works Grant (2006) and the Classical Commissioning Grant (2019). Other Grammy wins include Best Jazz Instrumental Album for "Rebirth," Best Arrangement, Instrumental & Vocal (featuring Renée Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma) for "New York Tendaberry," Best Instrumental Composition for "The Path Among the Trees’ (2011) and "Into The Light" (2005).

Born in Los Angeles in 1957, Childs was already proficient at the piano by age 6; he was accepted in USC’s Community School For The Performing Arts at age 16, studying music theory and piano with some of the world’s most renowned musical scholars. He graduated from USC in 1979 with a degree in composition. Among Childs’ early influences: Herbie Hancock, Keith Emerson, Chick Corea and others. He credits classical composers such as Paul Hindemith, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky for also influencing his love of composition. Childs' performing career was also enriched with early-career apprenticeships with legendary jazz trombonist J.J. Johnson, and trumpet great Freddie Hubbard.

Childs’ multiple musical interests also include collaborations, arrangements, and productions for other acclaimed artists, including Yo Yo Ma, The Kronos Quartet, Wynton Marsalis, Sting, Chris Botti, and Leonard Slatkin, among others. He has received orchestral commissions from The Los Angeles Philharmonic (Tone Poem, 1993; Fanfare for the United Races of America, 1994; If, to The Color of Midnight, 2003; and Of Darkness and Light, 2018), The Los Angeles Master Chorale (The Voices of Angels, 2005; and In Gratitude, 2017), The Dorian Wind Quartet (A Day in the Forest of Dreams, 1996), The Detroit Symphony Orchestra, The Lincoln Jazz Center Orchestra, The American Brass Quintet, The Lyris Quartet, Anne Akiko Meyers, Inna Faliks, and Rachel Barton Pine (a solo violin suite titled 'Four Portraits for Violin,' and a one movement sonata for violin and piano titled 'Incident on Larpenteur Avenue'). In 2013 he premiered 'Enlightened Souls' a commission from Duke University featuring Dianne Reeves and the Ying Quartet, to commemorate fifty years of African-American students attending the school. In 2016, he premiered the piano quintet, 'The Bird, The River, The Storm', also with the Ying Quartet (a piece they commissioned).