Robert Graettinger


Robert Frederick Graettinger was an American composer, best known for his work with Stan Kenton.

Biography

Graettinger grew up in Ontario, California, United States, learning to play the saxophone in high school. While at school he also began arranging music. In the 1940s he played alto saxophone with Benny Carter among others. Around this time he focused more on composing.
In 1947 he offered a short composition, "Thermopylae", to Stan Kenton, who decided to record it. Graettinger then came up with "City of Glass", a four-part tone poem. At this time he was studying composition under Russell Garcia.
Graettinger's radical polystylistic soundworld, with its polyphonic density and bracing atonality, while drawing on ideas previously explored by the likes of Charles Ives, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland and even Arnold Schoenberg, still remains truly distinctive. He died aged only 33, of lung cancer.

Discography

Capitol recordings with Stan Kenton

Thermopylae 1947Everything Happens To Me 1947A Presentation of Progressive Jazz Innovations in Modern Music 1950Stan Kenton Presents 1950City of Glass 1951The Kenton Era 1952This Modern World 1953

The Ebony Big Band

City of Glass: Robert Graettinger 1994The Ebony Big Band: Live at the Paradiso — Robert Graettinger 1998

Terry Vosbein and the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra

Progressive Jazz 2009 2009

Arrangements and compositions created for Kenton

+ indicates original composition