William David Brohn

William David "Bill" Brohn (born March 30, 1933 in Flint, Michigan) is an American arranger and orchestrator, best known for his scores of musicals such as Miss Saigon, Ragtime and Wicked. He won the Tony Award for Best Orchestrations for Ragtime and has won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations three times.

His work has been eclectic, orchestrating many different styles of music. His modern scores are known for their keyboard writing for the orchestra pit, and their balance between acoustic and synthesised sounds. Brohn is one of the few theatre orchestrators to use the E-bow attachment to the electric guitar, which can be heard in his orchestrations for Wicked and Mary Poppins.

Brohn studied Music Theory at Michigan State University, graduating with a Bachelor of Music in 1955. He also studied Composition at the New England Conservatory (1958) and took further education in Tanglewood, Massachusetts and in Salzburg, Austria. He was also mentored by the esteemed arranger Robert Russell Bennett. While a student, he performed on the Contrabass with dance bands, and some of these jazz and pop elements can be seen regularly in his Broadway arrangements.

In the 1960s, Brohn began his career as conductor for the Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and the Royal Ballet's tours of America. He then focused on orchestration during the next two decades, producing ballet scores for Agnes de Mille, Lar Lubovitch, Twyla Tharp, Susan Stroman and the American Ballet Theatre.

...
Wikipedia