Bill Elliott

Bill Elliott (born William F. Elliott; October 2, 1951) is an American pianist, bandleader, Hollywood composer and Broadway orchestrator. In 2015, he won a Tony Award for best orchestration for the Broadway musical, An American in Paris. In 2012 he was nominated for both Tony and Grammy awards for Broadway's Nice Work if You Can Get It. 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.

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

Early years Elliott grew up in Wayland, Massachusetts, about 20 miles west of Boston. 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. Other than high school music instruction, Elliott is basically self-taught. He did not attend college. 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. He performed on their 1972 album The Rowan Brothers, featuring Jerry Garcia and produced by bluegrass mandolinist David Grisman. The band was successful enough to perform as the opening act for The Grateful Dead at San Francisco's Fillmore West in 1971. and the HBO film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, starring Halle Berry, which featured Elliott's orchestra on the soundtrack. Lithgow collaborated with Elliott on other projects, such as the children's album, Singin' in the Bathtub, on which Elliott was conductor, orchestrator and performer. He also performed with Lithgow in live concerts for children featuring this work. By the late 1990s Elliott's career was almost exclusively focused on arranging, composing, and orchestrating for film, television, and children's music, with some time allotted for his orchestra. Elliott then learned of a job opening there in the Contemporary Writing and Production Department. He was hardly an academic, yet Elliott had the real-world experience that suited the job perfectly, and he accepted the offer and began teaching at Berklee in 2004. After returning to Boston, he soon began working with the Boston Pops Orchestra. She asked Elliott to orchestrate it and, through contacts he made doing that show, he was led to other theater work.

Broadway Elliott began writing for Broadway shows beginning about 2008. One of his original songs, "Bill's Bounce", was featured in the Broadway musical dance revue Swing!

He contributed additional orchestrations to the 2011 revival of Broadway's Anything Goes. In 2012 he was nominated for both Tony and Grammy awards for Nice Work if You Can Get It — the Tony nomination was for best orchestration, the Grammy nomination was for Best Musical Theater Album, for which Elliott was co-producer. Next was his orchestration for the 2013 adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.

Elliott, along with co-writer Greg Anthony Rassen, won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations in 2017 for the Broadway musical Bandstand. The production attracted attention because its direction and choreography were done by a ballet choreographer with no previous experience directing musicals.

The production had already been performed in Paris for four months when Elliott was hired to adapt the music to better suit Broadway. "I was brought in to re-do some of the songs in a more theatrical way," Elliott said.

Awards and nominations Year Award Category Work Result 2008 Emmy Award PBS documentary The Sinatra Legacy 2012 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Orchestrations Nice Work if You Can Get It 2012 Tony Award Best Orchestrations 2012 Grammy Award Best Musical Theater Album 2015 Tony Award Best Orchestrations An American in Paris 2017 Bandstand Drama Desk Award Outstanding Orchestration