Russell Garcia (composer)

Russell and Gina Garcia both received the 2009 Queen's Service Medal for New Zealand for their service to music.

On 27 May 2005 the L.A. Jazz Institute honoured Garcia for his more than 60 years of contributions to jazz. The evening was hosted by Tierney Sutton and guest speakers included Bill Holman, Duane Tatro and Bud Shank. Charmed Life: Shaynee Rainbolt Sings Russell Garcia is a recent CD release featuring his work in collaboration.

On Memorial Day weekend, 2003, Garcia and Buddy Childers had an event Contemporary Concepts Presented – A 4 Day Jazz Festival Celebrating The West Coast Big Band Sound in Concert in Los Angeles. Speakers/Panelists included Garcia, Buddy Childers, Pete Rugolo, and Allyn Ferguson.

At the age of ninety-two, Garcia was still composing and touring internationally, and he conducted his own 95th birthday concert in Kerikeri.

In his nineties, he composed original music for "A Path to Peace,", a piece inspired by the Baha'i writings that included his wife's lyrics. The Path to Peace incorporated nine major principles from The Promise of World Peace, published by the Baháʼí international administrative body, the Universal House of Justice, in 1985. The "[p]rinciples that promote peace include the equality of men and women, universal education, and the elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty."

When they reached Fiji in 1969, musicians from Auckland, New Zealand invited Garcia to do some live concerts, radio and television shows and to lecture at various universities around the country on behalf of the New Zealand Broadcasting Commission and Music Trades Association. Russell, when finished with his lectures and concerts and on advice of friends, drove up to the Bay of Islands in the north of North Island. Garcia and his wife fell in love with the location and bought a house on the water's edge of Tangitu Bay in the Te Puna Inlet, east of the Purerua Peninsula near Kerikeri.

In Fiji, in 1969, the "charm" spun again when musicians visiting from Auckland invited Garcia, on behalf of the New Zealand Broadcasting Commission and the Music Trades Association, to do live concerts, radio and TV shows as well as lecture at universities around the country, a perfect fit seeing as Garcia is also known in music circles as the author of what are considered the definitive textbooks on composition: The Professional Arranger Composer Books I and II. They have been translated into six languages and are used in universities and conservatories around the world.

Although he loved what he was doing, he decided to walk away from it all in 1966. "I fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II and vowed that if I ever got out of it alive, I was going to dedicate myself to world peace." The Garcias decided to sail the Pacific Ocean, carrying the message of peace and the Baháʼí Faith to the remote islands of the South Pacific. Garcia said, "Not many people have the chance to follow their hearts with no financial worries. We had the "charm" working for us: we knew the royalties would see us through for some years." They spent the next six years on their 13-metre fiberglass trimaran the Dawn-Breaker, as "traveling teachers," anchoring in such exotic locations as Jamaica, the Galapagos Islands, the Marquesas and Tahiti.

Garcia was born in Oakland, California, but was a longtime resident of New Zealand. Self-taught, his break came when he substituted for an ill colleague on a radio show. Subsequently, he went on to become a composer/arranger at NBC Studios for such television shows as Rawhide 1962 and Laredo, 1965–67. He worked at Universal Studios and MGM, where at the latter he composed and conducted the original scores for such films as George Pal's The Time Machine (1960) and Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961). He also orchestrated the music for Father Goose (1964) and The Benny Goodman Story (1956). Garcia collaborated with many Hollywood musicians and celebrities, including Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Anita O'Day, Mel Torme, Julie London, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson, Walt Disney, Orson Welles, Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan, Andy Williams, Judy Garland, Henry Mancini, and Charlie Chaplin making arrangements and conducting orchestras as needed. Russ loved to ski so he would write on-site scores to ski-content films.

His Baha'i music includes the music (and non scripture lyrics) for 1960s and 1970s songs "One Heart Ruby Red" (with Donna Taylor), "Nightingale of Paradise" (with Gina Garcia), "Hollow Reed", "We Will Have One World", "The Hatin' Wall" (with Donna Taylor), "Live in the Glory" (with Dorothy Wayne), "Hidden Words", and "Into Parched and Arid Wastelands"

In 1957, through his Universal Studios contract, he arranged and conducted Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald's record album Porgy And Bess. He undertook three more albums and a concert at the Hollywood Bowl with Armstrong.

Garcia and his wife Gina Mauriello Garcia, a published author and singer-lyricist-writer in her own right, were members of the Baháʼí Faith since 1955. In 1966, at the height of his career, the Garcias sold their home and possessions, bought a boat, and set sail on June 1. However, the couple knew nothing about sailing and Gina did not know how to swim; the early arrival of Hurricane Alma forced them to return after only two days at sea. It was December before damage to the boat was finally repaired and they set forth once again. This time they reached Nassau without further complications and spent several years as "travel-teachers" for the Baháʼís as they went around the world to places like the Galapagos Islands, Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands.

According to Garcia's obituary in the Los Angeles Times and his obituary by Marc Myers in Jazzwax, a daily jazz blog Garcia did the orchestration for "the 65-piece studio symphony" for Charlie Chaplin's 1952 film Limelight. However, in 1972, when Limelight won an Oscar for the best original dramatic score, the three Oscars were given to Chaplin, Raymond Rasch and posthumously to Larry Russell, who was also a composer and movie arranger at the time.

Universal Studios contracted Garcia to work as composer, arranger and conductor in the 1950s. He remained in the post for 15 years.

His first break came in 1939, when the composer/conductor of the radio show This is Our America fell ill and Garcia was recommended to fill in. He so impressed the director, Ronald Reagan, that he was kept on for two years. Reagan was then married to Jane Wyman who recommended Garcia to NBC, where he was hired as a staff composer and arranger. As word got out, he said he never had to look for work: "It's always come to me. I do lead a charmed life." Soon after, Henry Mancini called on Garcia and his extraordinary talent of transcribing note for note, instrument for instrument, to work on The Glenn Miller Story.

Russell Garcia, QSM (12 April 1916 – 19 November 2011) was an American composer and arranger who wrote a wide variety of music for screen, stage and broadcast.