(b Wichita, KS, 15 Dec 1911; d Los Angeles, 25 Aug 1979). American jazz bandleader, pianist and arranger. After playing the piano and writing arrangements for various theatre and dance bands in the 1930s he formed his own 14-piece big band, the Artistry in Rhythm Orchestra, in 1941. This group immediately drew public attention with its large sound and precise execution (for example, on the album Artistry in Rhythm, 1943, Cap.), and from 1945, when Pete Rugolo became its staff arranger, it began to dominate jazz popularity polls. In 1949 Kenton appeared in Carnegie Hall with a new 20-piece orchestra, Progressive Jazz, which gave its name to the jazz movement it represented. After retiring briefly in 1949 for reasons of health, Kenton assembled his most ambitious band, the 43-piece Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra, with strings and an expanded wind section. This group conducted two nationwide tours (1950–51), performing monumental ‘arranger's originals’ such as Bob Graettinger's City of Glass (1951, Cap.), but in the end proved too costly to maintain. Thereafter Kenton led a succession of more conventional big bands, with which he frequently recorded and undertook foreign tours.
Kenton established the first of his university ‘jazz clinics’ in 1959, at Indiana and Michigan State universities. Although he continued to produce outstanding big-band recordings – his albums West Side Story and Adventures in Jazz (both 1961, Cap.) received Grammy awards – his later career centred on university campuses, where he proved to be an outstanding band trainer and talent scout. In January 1965 he launched his Los Angeles Neophonic Orchestra, a 23-piece concert jazz band with symphonic pretensions (its first concert, at which Friedrich Gulda performed his jazz piano concerto, included transcriptions of works by Wagner), but after two seasons this ensemble also failed. In 1970 Kenton formed his own recording and publishing companies, Creative World Records and Creative World Music, to disseminate the past and current work of his bands.
Kenton occupies an ambiguous position in jazz history: his own considerable talents as an arranger and pianist were soon overshadowed by those of his superior sidemen and staff arrangers, and his obvious success with the public at large was offset by almost universal condemnation from the jazz critical establishment. At its worst (in his Innovations orchestra) the progressive-jazz movement he initiated was vacuous and pretentious; at its best it served as a vehicle for some of the most sensitive and inventive big-band scores of the post-swing era (by Rugolo, Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan, Neal Hefti, William Russo, Johnny Richards and others). An extraordinarily large number of excellent jazz soloists began their careers in Kenton's groups, among the best being Anita O'Day, June Christy, Lee Konitz, Art Pepper, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Pepper Adams, Maynard Ferguson, Kai Winding, Laurindo Almeida and Shelly Manne. Scores from his library continue to circulate widely among American stage bands; 12 of them were choreographed for a ballet evening at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, in 1954. Kenton's greatest contribution was probably as an educator and trainer of young talent, in which area his influence is still evident in American universities.
H.J. Dietzel and H.H. Lange: Stan Kenton (Berlin, 1959) [H.J. Dietzel: Stan Kenton Biography and H.H. Lange: Stan Kenton Discography bound together]
J. McKinney: ‘The Kenton Story: the Rise and Achievements of the Most Controversial Figure in the History of Jazz’, Crescendo, iv (1965–6), no.3, pp.20–23; no.4, pp.17–19; no.5, pp.32–3; no.6, pp.24–6; no.7, pp.12–14
P. Venudor and M. Sparke: The Standard Stan Kenton Directory, i: 1937–1949 (Amsterdam, 1968)
A.J. Agostinelli: Stan Kenton: the Many Musical Moods of his Orchestras (Providence, RI, 1986) [bio-discography]
L. Arganian: Stan Kenton: the Man and his Music (East Lansing, MI, 1989)
E.F. Gabel: Stan Kenton: the Early Years, 1941–1947 (Lake Geneva, WI, 1993)
M. Sparke, P. Venudor amd J. Hartley: Kenton on Capitol and Creative World (Hounslow, 1994) [discography]
Collection of scores held at US-DN
J. BRADFORD ROBINSON