Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Billy Childs was William Edward Childs on March 8, 1957 in Los Angeles, California and began piano lessons when he was six. By age 16 he started attending the Community School of the Performing Arts, a prestigious music program sponsored by the University of Southern California, in which he ultimately attended in 1975.

Childs was playing professionally as a teenager and he made his recording debut in 1977 with the J. J. Johnson Quintet’s Yokohama Concert during a tour of Japan. He would gain significant attention during his six-year stint playing with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s group from 1978 to ’84.

His early playing influences were Herbie Hancock, Keith Emerson and Chick Corea and in his composing came by Paul Hindemith, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky. Adept in both the jazz and classical idioms, Childs develop his own voice with an original conception near the start of his career. His solo recording career began in 1988 with the release of Take for Example, This… the first of four critically Windham Hill Jazz label. He would go on to record two albums for Stretch/GRP and Shanachie.

In 2000 Childs arranged, orchestrated and conducted for Dianne Reeves’ project The Calling: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan that won a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal. He has also arranged for Sting, Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Botti, Gladys Knight, Michael Bublé, David Foster, Phil Ramone and Claudia Acuna.

Billy’s 2005 “Lyric, Jazz-Chamber Music, Vol. 1”, a jazz chamber music ensemble recording, influenced by the Laura Nyro-Alice Coltrane collaboration, garnered three Grammy nominations; he has received a total of three Grammy awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Chamber music grant, and has been commissioned for more than a dozen jazz and classical compositions and arrangements.

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