Russo, a Chicago resident, while best known for Jazz, was also recognized for Classical, Contemporary, Avant Garde, Rock, and for Performing, Composing, Conducting, and for Promoting Theater Movements and Music Festivals.

Although he battled Cancer for the last two years, he never stopped working, and he gave his last performance just a week ago Monday, before he died of Pneumonia on the following Saturday.
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WILLIAM RUSSO, 74, JAZZ  MUSICIAN 

Chicago Sun Times
By Curtis Lawrence
Staff Reporter
January 13, 2003

William Russo was a 7-year-old kid growing up on the Near North Side when he first took to the trombone. Though the instrument was bigger than he was, he was fascinated by the way his Uncle Frank mastered it while playing at the Palace Theater in downtown Chicago.

His father, also named William, played clarinet in the orchestra led by another uncle, Danny Russo.

But the trombone would only be part of Mr. Russo's legacy. He not only played with jazz legends including Lee Konitz, Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson, but he became renowned as a great jazz arranger and composer.

He composed music performed by Leonard Bernstein at Carnegie Hall and also was a leader of the city's avant-garde theater movement. He led the Contemporary American Music Program at Columbia College. Through the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, which he founded, he worked tirelessly to keep jazz on center stage.

It was almost impossible to compose a complete list of Mr. Russo's accomplishments before he died of pneumonia Saturday at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, because he never stopped working and adding to his resume. He was 74.

Mr. Russo, who had battled cancer for the last two years, went to Senn High School along with Konitz, the alto sax great. After working in various groups and studying with visionary pianist Lennie Tristano, he formed the Experiments in Jazz Orchestra in 1947.

In 1950, Mr. Russo joined the Stan Kenton orchestra, which included Konitz, Art Pepper, Zoot Sims and Ferguson. He stayed with the group four years before he went on to lead his own orchestras in New York, Massachusetts and London.

In 1958, he formed and conducted the Russo Orchestra, according to the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. 

Mr. Russo began to write music, and one of his works, "Titans," was conducted by Leonard Bernstein at Carnegie Hall featuring Ferguson on trumpet.

In 1965, Mr. Russo returned to Chicago to head the contemporary music program at Columbia. He retired from the position last June to devote more time to the Chicago Jazz Ensemble.

The ensemble attempted to revive the work of jazz legends such as Jelly Roll Morton. In 2000, the ensemble played several of Morton's works, including some that had been thought lost, at the Chicago Humanities Festival.

"On a professional level, it was amazing to me to hear the quality of this music," Russo told the New York Times after the performance.

During the 1970s, Mr. Russo concentrated more on classically oriented projects, including a concerto Ellington was set to perform before his death in 1974.

But in 1991, after Mr. Russo was reunited with Konitz at the Chicago Jazz Festival, he fell in love with jazz once again, according to a Sun-Times interview.

"During the '70s and '80s, I felt that the odds were too great against a white person with third-stream Tristano and Lester Young roots being able to pull this sort of thing off," Mr. Russo said in 1995.

"Why did I come back?'' Mr. Russo said. "Because I missed the music.

"His most recent performance with the Chicago Jazz Ensemble was last Monday at the Jazz Showcase.

Mr. Russo was key in the development of the off-Loop theater movement in the 1960s. He was one of the founders, along with Paul Sills and Jim Shiflett, of the Body Politic in 1969 and the Free Theater, which grew out of Body Politic.

Mr. Russo became known for his rock cantatas. One of them, "The Civil War," was based on poems by Abraham Lincoln and drew links between that era and the civil rights movement.

Mr. Russo is survived by his son, Alexander; daughters Camille Blinstrub, Condee Russo and Whitney Schildgen; sister Barbara Russo Evans, and two grandchildren.

Burial is private, and a memorial service is pending.

William Russo, 74, jazz musician 
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