Jack Cooper
arranger, conductor
U.S.A.
With a wide range of musical activities and professional accomplishments over the past 35 years, Jack Cooper is an internationally recognized jazz artist.
He has been hailed by the Chicago Tribune’s music critic Howard Reich naming Cooper’s 2014 release “Mists: Charles Ives for Jazz Orchestra” (Planet Arts) as one of the top ten jazz CDs for that year.
Cooper is musical director for two big band releases on Origin Records jazz label. Polish jazz critic Andrzej Fikus writes, “Time Within Itself” (Origin 82690) owes its success largely to excellent arrangements by Jack Cooper, one of today’s best jazz arrangers in the U.S. … (sic) particularly in the layer of instrumentation, Cooper gives a masterful display.”
His chamber music can be heard on the CD recording “The Chamber Wind Music of Jack Cooper” (Centaur 3027, released in 2010). Cooper’s Saxophone Sonata from that release is highly regarded, belonging with “such landmark ‘jazz/classical’ pieces as the Phil Woods Sonata, on any recital or concert program that explores (both) these worlds.”
Cooper is musical director and founder of the U.S., Mid-South based Jazz Orchestra of the Delta. Their CD, “Big Band Reflections of Cole Porter” (Summit Records ) was released in 2003 to international acclaim.
His television and media writing credits include the The Jenny Jones Show, Danish Radio 2 (DR P2), E! Entertainment shows, Access Hollywood, American Restoration, Deal or No Deal, and Extra.
His music has been featured at numerous venues around the world to include the North Sea and Montreux Jazz Festivals.
He served as a staff arranger for Columbia Pictures and Warner Brothers publishing from 1992 through 2015; he is currently a featured composer for Excelcia Music. Cooper toured and recorded in the sax section and as staff arranger with the U.S. Army Jazz Knights (1989-1995).
Cooper is the Pearl Wales Professor of Jazz and Commercial Music at the University of Memphis Scheidt School of Music; he earned degrees from California State University, Los Angeles and The University Texas at Austin. He studied composition and arranging privately with Gerald Wilson, Manny Albam and Karl Korte.
Since Fall of 2016, Jack Cooper has been serving as a staff arranger for the Berlin Jazz Orchestra. Their new GAM album release, “Songs of Berlin” was entirely written and conducted by him; a musical tour of songs about the great city of Berlin. As co-producer, he worked closely with Marc Secara on the release to deliver an updating of this popular repertoire.
Artist on GAM Records
Songs of Berlin – in our store and on all digital platforms now!
In a collaboration with American arranger and producer JACK COOPER and American trombone legend JIGGS WHIGHAM, the BERLIN JAZZ ORCHESTRA feat. MARC SECARA presents all hues of contemporary Big Band Sound.
Revisiting many classic songs written about the city of Berlin, they pay tribute in an intimate yet extraordinarily energetic way to this multi-faceted and historically charged city, their city.