Brian Setzer Orchestra

His first step was to move to England and unleash the Stray Cats, whose ferocious shows shot them to international prominence. Three Top Ten singles powered their first album, Built for Speed, to the top of the charts.
During the 1990’s (when grunge ruled the charts), he assembled his monstrous big band complete with a 13-piece horn section that ignited an international modern swing explosion, sold millions of albums, and racked up his 3 Grammy wins: two for Best Pop Instrumental Performance (Sleepwalk, from the multi-platinum The Dirty Boogie in 1998 and Caravan, from VaVoom, in 2000) and one for Best Pop Performance (Jump, Jive an’ Wail, also from The Dirty Boogie, 1998). He tested the waters of jump blues and Rat Pack jive. Along the way he continued to sell millions of records and built a reputation as one of the world’s most respected guitarists _ he even supervised the launch of his own series of Gretsch signature guitars. Yet even with his Gretsch affiliation, the Gibson guitar company has singled him out for a prestigious Orville H. Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award.

The past decade has been a very prolific period for Brian as he has had the opportunity to experiment freely between the BSO and various other musical configurations. In addition to the aforementioned Christmas titles, he and his big band have recorded two very ambitious studio projects. The Grammy-nominated ‘Wolfgang’s Big Night Out’ was a rock and roll swing homage to the great 19th and 20th century classical composers. The BSO follow up, ‘Songs From Lonely Avenue’ featured highly orchestrated arrangements by the legendary 87-year-old Frank Comstock best known for his work with the pioneering big bands of the 40’s and 50’s.