1912 
Kenton is born in Wichita, Kansas, and is brought up in California.
He begins a musical life on the road when eighteen.
1949
Kenton forms a new 20-piece orchestra called Progressive Jazz.
1950-52
Kenton's next venture is the Innovations In Modern Music Orchestra,
a 43-piece band with a strings and an expanded wind section. The
repertoire is experimental, pretentiously so, and this
meets with some popular resistance; the financial costs are enormous.
1952-54
Kenton reverts to a more conventional modern swing sound, with Lee
Konitz and Zoot Sims (saxophones) on board.
1950s-60s
Kenton's later years centre on university
campuses. In 1959 Kenton takes his first university 'jazz
clinic'. He continues to record and his enthusiasm for musical adventure
remains: in 1965, for example, he forms the Los Angeles Neophonic
Orchestra, a 23-piece concert band, and performs Friedrich Gulda's
Jazz Piano Concerto, and records transcriptions of Wagner!
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1941-48
He forms his own band in California, the Artistry In Rhythm Orchestra,
essentially a dance band with a big, well drilled sound, which achieves
success through radio broadcasts and national tours until 1948. Pete
Rugolo becomes staff arranger in 1945; Shelly Manne joins in 1946,
Art Pepper in 1947, and the
music becomes more progressive.
"We've
tried everything from playing music backwards; we've played three
tunes at a time simultaneously, getting all kinds of polytonal effects;
we've gotten so progressive that we went off the end and had to
go back around and jump on again!"
Stan Kenton
STYLE
The jury is still out on Kenton's role in jazz history. His
standing changes with public taste and prevailing critical trends.
And if the main charge against him is that he was musically gauche
and awkwardly self-conscious, his role as
a jazz educator was significant. His band, like Fletcher
Henderson's decades before, was a classroom for budding big-time
soloists: Lee Konitz, Stan Getz, Kai Winding, Art
Pepper, Maynard Ferguson and Shelly Manne all took their breaks
from the opportunities he afforded them, as did the many talented
arrangers who worked for him, Gerry Mulligan,
Shorty Rogers, Neal Hefti and Pete Rugolo and Bill Russo. |