William Joseph Russo (June 25, 1928 – January 11, 2003) was an American composer, arranger, and musician from Chicago, Illinois, United States.
The success prompted the label to release Russo's Street Music, A Blues Concerto in 1979, featuring Corky Siegel on harmonica and piano.
Russo's theater works included a rock cantata, The Civil War (1968), based on poems by Paul Horgan.
Russo's other works for the theater include the operas John Hooton (1962), The Island (1963), Land of Milk and Honey (1964), Antigone (1967), The Shepherds' Christmas, The Pay-Off (1983–84), The Sacrifice, and Dubrovsky (1988), as well as a double bill of operas inspired by commedia dell'arte, Isabella's Fortune and Pedrolino's Revenge (performed off-Broadway in 1974), and a musical fairy tale for children, The Golden Bird, for singers, narrator, dancers, and symphony orchestra (premiered in 1984 under the auspices of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra).
His collaborators included Adrian Mitchell, Arnold Weinstein, Jon Swan, Alice Albright Hoge, Irma Routen, Naomi Lazard, Robert Perrey, Donald T. Sanders, Albert Williams, Jonathan Abarbanel, and Denise DeClue.
Russo also composed art songs set to poetry by Edna St. Vincent Millay, W. H. Auden, and Gertrude Stein, as well as scores for dance and film.
[3][4] He later married Jeremy Warburg, a music teacher, who was a granddaughter of American magazine publisher Condé Nast.
[1] His students included Neil Ardley, John Barry, Patrick Gowers, Mark Hollmann, Fred Karlin, Richard Peaslee, Joseph Reiser, Louis Rosen, Kenny Wheeler and Albert Williams.
His five-decade career included collaborations with his idol Duke Ellington, Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Stan Kenton, Cannonball Adderley, Yehudi Menuhin, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter, Maynard Ferguson, Billie Holiday, Cleo Laine, and Annie Ross.