Billy Childs

The 2018 Grammy Award winner for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Billy Childs is a versatile improvisational jazz pianist and composer whose talents have been recognized with over 10 Grammy nominations and a Guggenheim Fellowship award. Childs has performed with several influential jazz artists including J.J. Johnson and Joe Henderson before landing a deal with Wyndam Records in 1988. He subsequently released Take For Example, This…, the first of four critically-acclaimed albums for the label. Childs acknowledges legends like Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock as his early jazz influences, and attributes his love of composition to classical composers such as Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky. This broad range of influences results in his own “neoclassical” style which crosses musical boundaries.

Over the course of his versatile career, Childs has collaborated with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Sting, and the Kronos Quartet. He oversaw the Grammy-winning project The Calling: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan by Diane Reeves in 2000.

Says the Los Angeles Times of 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.”

Childs will join the UW Jazz Orchestra on stage for an exciting opening act. The UW Jazz Orchestra performs music ranging from the classic big band repertoire to more cutting-edge works by the leading jazz composers of our era.

The concert is presented by the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Performing Arts. This program was supported in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts. WORT, 89.9 FM is the media sponsor.