BILLY CHILDS
“As a pianist, he possesses the improvisatory skills and powerful sense of swing one associates with world-class artists… Childs is an inventive composer and arranger whose effort in those areas consistently expand the dimensions of the jazz genre - and beyond.””
Billy Childs has emerged as one of the foremost American composers of his era, successfully marrying the musical products of his heritage with the Western neoclassical traditions of the twentieth century in a powerful symbiosis of style, range, and dynamism.
Thus far, in his career, Childs has garnered seventeen Grammy nominations and six Grammy awards including two for Best Instrumental Jazz Album (Winds of Change in 2024 and Rebirth in 2018), and two for Best Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist (including New York Tendaberry from Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro, featuring Renee Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma). In 2006, Childs was awarded a Chamber Music America composer’s grant, and in 2009 was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2013 he was awarded the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. He has also been awarded a composers award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2015). In 2018, Childs was named “Outstanding Alumnus” of the Thornton School of Music (sharing that honor with, among others, Morton Lauridsen, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Marilyn Horne). Childs has also served as president of Chamber Music America (2016-2022).
Born in Los Angeles, he entered USC as a composition major, graduating four years later with a bachelor of music in composition under the tutelage of Robert Linn. Since then Mr. Childs has received a number of orchestral and chamber commissions from, among others: Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Monterey Jazz Festival, the Dorian Wind Quintet, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the American Brass Quintet, the Ying Quartet, the Lyris Quartet, Anne Akiko Meyers, Rachel Barton Pine, and Inna Faliks.
As a pianist Childs has performed with, among others, Freddie Hubbard, J.J. Johnson, Yo-Yo Ma, Sting, Renee Fleming, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony, Chick Corea, the Kronos Quartet, Wynton Marsalis, Jack DeJohnette, the Dorian Wind Quintet, Ying Quartet, the American Brass Quintet, and Dave Holland.
Childs’ solo jazz recording career includes four critically acclaimed albums on the Windham Hill Jazz label and two volumes of Chamber Jazz music (Lyric, Vol. 1, 2006 and Autumn: In Moving Pictures, Vol. 2, 2010). Childs expanded upon his talent for seamlessly straddling the lines between jazz and classical worlds with a collection of re-imagined Laura Nyro compositions for Sony Masterworks, released in September 2014. Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro, was produced by Larry Klein and features as guest artists, among others: Renée Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, Wayne Shorter, Alison Kraus, Dianne Reeves, Chris Botti, Esperanza Spalding, and Lisa Fischer. In 2017, Childs released the first of his three Mack Avenue recordings, the Grammy Award-winning Rebirth, which was followed by 2020’s Acceptance and 2023’s Grammy Award-winning The Winds of Change.
Childs is an in-demand clinician, whose recent invitations include working with students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, masterclasses at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany, and an educational residency at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.
Selected commissions include, among others:
LA Philharmonic:
Tone Poem for Holly, (1993)
Fanfare for the United Races of America, (1994)
If, to The Color of Midnight, (2003)
Of Darkness and Light, (2018)
LA Master Chorale:
The Voices of Angels, (2005)
In Gratitude, (2017)
Dorian Wind Quintet:
A Day in the Forest of Dreams, for piano and wind quintet, (1996)
Ecosystems, for wind quintet, (2019)
Ying Quartet:
Awakening - string quartet #2, (2013)
The River, the Bird, and the Storm, for piano and string quartet, (2016)
Lyris Quartet:
Unrequited - string quartet #3
Regina Carter and the Detroit Symphony:
Violin Concerto #1, (2009)
Rachel Barton Pine:
Four Portraits for Violin, suite for solo violin, (2016)
Incident on Larpenteur Avenue, one movement sonata for piano and violin, (2017)
Violin Concerto #2, (2021)
Most recent 2022/2023:
The Inexorable Motion of Time for 6 percussionists and piano (2022 - Eastman School of Music premiere)
Variations on a Rondo for string quartet (2022 - Project Inclusion premiere at Grant Park, Chicago)
Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, for Steven Banks (2022), a consortium commission including the Detroit Symphony, the National Symphony, the Minneapolis Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, and others (10 orchestras total)
My Roots Spread Far and Wide, for Billy Childs trio and Delirium Musicum (2022) - premiered Feb 23, 2023 at the Soraya Center, CSUN, as part of the Treelogy projec
Labyrinth, for Terell Stafford and Dick Oatts with University of Temple big band and orchestra (2023)
Violin Concerto #2, (2022) for Rachel Barton Pine, a consortium commission for the Grant Park Orchestra, the Boulder Philharmonic, the Anchorage Symphony, and the Interlochen Orchestra
In the Arms of the Beloved, (2023) for the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Anne Akiko Meyers, the Lyris Quartet, and the Billy Childs Jazz Chamber Ensemble - premiered at Disney Concert Hall, November 18-19
Opera based on Kindred, by Octavia Butler
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