Mel Powell (born Melvin Epstein) (February 12, 1923 – April 24, 1998) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, and the founding dean of the music department at the California Institute of the Arts.

His classic Big Band compositions include "Mission to Moscow", "My Guy's Come Back", "Clarinade", "The Earl", and "Bubble Bath".

Near the war's end, Powell was stationed in Paris, where he played with Django Reinhardt, and then returned for a brief stint in Goodman's band again after being discharged from the military.

[1] He played himself in the movie A Song Is Born (1948), appearing along with many other famous jazz players, including Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman.

The illness effectively ended his ability to work as a traveling musician again with Goodman or other bands,[5] prompting him to devote himself to composition rather than performance.

[6] At first sticking to neoclassical styles of composition, Powell increasingly explored atonality, or "non-tonal" music as he called it,[3] as well as the serialism advocated by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg.

In 1987, Powell joined other musicians for a jazz festival on the cruise ship SS Norway, playing alongside Benny Carter, Howard Alden, Milt Hinton, Louie Bellson and others.

"[3] In 1990, Powell received his highest career achievement, the Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his work Duplicates: A Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra.

[7] In a Los Angeles Times interview, Powell expressed complete surprise: "Being out here on the coast, far away from the whole Eastern establishment to which the Pulitzer is connected – that made me a remote prospect.

"[5] In an interview with The New York Times, Powell related the story of how Duplicates came from his service in World War II and an anecdote he heard in Paris about Claude Debussy's search for perfect music.

The work, commissioned in 1987 for the Los Angeles Philharmonic by music patron Betty Freeman, took Powell more than two years to complete.

It was made even more difficult as his muscular dystrophy, previously affecting only his legs, began to afflict his arms and thus his ability to play the piano.