Billy Strayhorn

Billy Strayhorn was an American jazz composer, pianist and arranger born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1915 and raised in Pittsburgh, who began his professional career in the 1930s and worked primarily in the big-band jazz idiom. His work employed sophisticated harmonies, extended song forms and a blending of blues and classical influences, and his compositions and arrangements were central to the repertoire of a major American jazz orchestra in the mid-20th century.