San Jose's Premier big band plays the music of local composer and jazz legend Ray Brown.
Composer, arranger, flugelhornist, teacher, and band leader. Ray started writing for big bands at the age of twelve in New York after hearing the creative and witty arrangements of Willie Maiden and Slide Hampton. A 1968 graduate of Ithaca College, he spent 18 months on the road with the Stan Kenton Band in the early seventies, playing the Jazz trumpet chair. He moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1975 and played with numerous groups, including Bill Berry’s LA Band, Nat Pierce and Frankie Capp’s Juggernaut, and the Full Faith and Credit Big Band, for which he wrote and conducted three albums.