Bill Elliott

The film was Dick Tracy starring Warren Beatty, and it needed a 1930s swing-type tune.

Bill Elliott (born William F. Elliott; October 2, 1951) is an American pianist, bandleader, Hollywood composer and Broadway orchestrator.

In 1969, he graduated from Wayland High School, where he played clarinet in the school band.

Encouraged by director George Doren, Elliott wrote his first orchestrations for the band to play at football game halftimes.

Even as a teenager, he liked swing music, and learned to play Fats Waller-style stride piano, but at the time, this was little more than a hobby because his real interest was the pop music of the day.

His piano skills showed early, and he quickly became a favored keyboardist for artists around the Boston area.

Other than high school music instruction, Elliott is basically self-taught.

He did not attend college.

He said, "I was impatient."

"I just wanted to be a musician".

In 1969, at age 18, he was invited to come to Los Angeles to perform on a recording by one of his Massachusetts friends, John Compton, who was making his first studio album called In California.

In an interview 40 years later, Compton said of Elliott, "Bill only needs to hear a song once and he already knows it perfectly. He's like a modern-day Mozart, and really looked the part back then."

Soon, Elliott decided to move to Los Angeles.

He had some significant early success performing in a country-rock band called The Rowan Brothers, named for Elliott's hometown friends Lorin and Chris Rowan who had moved to California.

Elliott moved back to Boston in the mid 1970s and toured with some popular acts of the day, including Livingston Taylor (brother of James Taylor), Jonathan Taylor and Tom Rush.

Elliott's first big band writing was for a show performed by actor/comedian Martin Mull.

Elliott said, "The show covered many musical styles, including swing, country, and r&b. It was a real education learning how to arrange for these distinct genres on the fly."

The band was successful enough to perform as the opening act for The Grateful Dead at San Francisco's Fillmore West in 1971.

He also played with other California bands, such as Seatrain and Marblehead.

He performed on their 1972 album The Rowan Brothers, featuring Jerry Garcia and produced by bluegrass mandolinist David Grisman.

In 1977, at age 26, he returned to L.A., which was his home base while touring as a member of Bonnie Raitt's band for about two years.

Between tours he found work making demo recordings for music publishers; this work honed his skills—enough for Elliott to enter into a select group of elite recording keyboardists, that allowed him to focus on studio work and to stop touring.

Elliott was booked on sessions to record with artists including Stevie Nicks, Donna Summer, America, Robbie Dupree, and Smokey Robinson.

In his 30s, punk rock and new wave music was coming in style, but Elliott could not imagine himself playing that type of music.

He began to focus more on writing and orchestrating, working for free at first, doing musical scores for low-budget films.

He developed this skill by teaching himself.

He said, "I learned by doing. I learned arranging on the fly, just trying it out."

A break came when some Boston friends, who were working on a movie, asked him if he could write something for it.

In 2012 he was nominated for both Tony and Grammy awards for Broadway's Nice Work if You Can Get It.

In 2015, he won a Tony Award for best orchestration for the Broadway musical, An American in Paris.

As of 2016, Elliott is on the faculty of Boston's Berklee College of Music.

He has written over 50 arrangements for the Boston Pops Orchestra and has been guest conductor for the symphony orchestras of seven major cities.

Elliott grew up in Wayland, Massachusetts, about 20 miles west of Boston.

Elliott won Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations in 2017 for the Broadway Musical Bandstand.

Elliott began as a Los Angeles studio musician, recording with artists such as Stevie Nicks, Smokey Robinson, Donna Summer, Bette Midler, and others.

In his 20s he was the pianist in Bonnie Raitt's band.

His career in contemporary pop music gradually and serendipitously turned toward orchestration of films, television, and then Broadway musicals.

Films that feature Elliott's music include Dick Tracy, Nixon, Contact, Independence Day and Wedding Crashers.

He has written music for Disney's video sequels to Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, and for the television shows Northern Exposure, Ellen and Gilmore Girls.

At age 42, he formed "The Bill Elliott Swing Orchestra", which has performed on movie soundtracks and on record albums for prominent artists.