Francy Boland

François " Francy " Boland ( born November 6, 1929 in Namur, † August 13, 2005 in Geneva) was a Belgian jazz pianist and arranger.

Life

Boland began playing the piano at age eight. He studied after the Second World War music at the Conservatory of Liege.

After completing his musical studies at the Conservatory in Liege ( Liege ), began, born in 1929 in the Belgian Namur Boland 1949 his jazz career. In the first half of the fifties he worked in Paris primarily as an arranger for jazz artists such as Bobby Jaspar, Bernard Peiffer, Henri Renaud and Fats Sadi. 1955 brought him the trumpeter Chet Baker as a pianist in his quintet and paved him the way to the United States. Between 1956 and 1958, Boland was living in New York, where he worked as an arranger for the likes of Count Basie and Benny Goodman.

In the 1960s and 1970s he was at the peak of his career. On the initiative of Gigi Campi he founded in 1959 with drummer Kenny Clarke Kenny Clarke / Francy Boland Big Band. After very successful years, this was dissolved in 1972. In the years after Francy Boland composed for major orchestras, including Count Basie.

Among the artists who worked with Boland, was also Gitte Hænning, 1969 after years as a pop singer recorded a swing album and thus made ​​known to a wider public as a jazz singer.

In 1984 Boland arranged the music to texts of American song lyricist Gene Lees, who had transferred poems by Pope John Paul II into English. The album was recorded with singer Sarah Vaughan and an orchestra conducted by Lalo Schifrin.

On 12 August 2005 François " Francy " Boland has succumbed to cancer in his adopted home of Geneva.